More than 11 years have passed since author Adam Cohen published his insider’s chronicle of eBay, called “The Perfect Store.” EBay (EBAY) earned that lofty title because it offered a way for folks to buy and sell items via an easy-to-use online auction system. Its auction website could be tapped to sell everything from bric-a-brac and old records to Cadillacs and $40,000 computer servers. Founded in 1995, at the dawn of the dot-com era, eBay
Corporate raider Carl Icahn on Thursday unexpectedly ended his pitched campaign to force eBay (EBAY) to spin off its lucrative PayPal payments unit after reaching a deal with eBay’s management to add an independent director to the auction website company’s board. Icahn, who holds a roughly 2% stake in eBay, also agreed to withdraw his two nominees to eBay’s board. The independent board member is David Dorman, the 60-year-old chairman of CVS Caremark
The biggest “wild cards” in the mobile wallet race are Apple (AAPL) and retail consortium MCX, while credit card networks such as Visa (V)and MasterCard (MA) as well as eBay’s (EBAY) PayPal are well-positioned, says Jefferies, which this week hosted an electronic payments summit. Apple’s massive iTunes credit card database will make the tech giant a big mobile payments player when it enters the field, as IBD reported. MCX is a group of some 60