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EBay exec gets $1 million to buy a house

Posted Jul 28 2008, 03:02 PM by Kim Peterson
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The excellent Footnoted blog digs up an offer letter in an eBay filing, and finds that the company gave incoming executive Alan Marks $1 million to buy a house in the Bay Area. If Marks leaves the company within a year, he must repay the bonus.

Marks also gets a $300,000 annual salary, stock awards, annual bonuses, a one-time bonus of $65,000, up to six months in corporate housing and paid relocation. What, no golden coffin? So who is this guy and why is he so important?

Turns out Marks is in charge of "reputation management." Oof. Good luck with that. He's also the top guy for corporate communications, which means he'll figure out how eBay should position itself to the media, employees and shareholders. He previously worked for Nike and Gap.

EBay shares are down more than 2% today to $24.80.

Related reading:

"Golden coffins" for executives

Americans losing interest in eBay

EBay's unfair discount program

EBay's changing auction strategy

 

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Comments

 

A. Pilotti is right. Prices for an average house in that area start at $700,000, so it's not like one million will buy an MTV cribs like  mansion

Fla Gal! (Posted 07.28.08 5:47 PM) Report Abuse

yes.... this IS why Corporate America is in deep trouble.. to many leeches and parasites sucking up vastly more than they are worth...  most people also have to work hard, but without the benefit of megabucks from insiders with more authority to spend stockholder's money than ethics..

Glenn (Posted 07.28.08 5:48 PM) Report Abuse

Ebay has screwed the sellers already this year with their new rules--maybe he can get things straight again---but i doubt it...

robert (Posted 07.28.08 5:55 PM) Report Abuse

Hey I sell on ebay so I think they should at least pay my house payment say for at least 6 months. Or untill ebay starts to bring back the strong buying like in the early 90's.

Moose (Posted 07.28.08 5:56 PM) Report Abuse

$300,000 is a median-range executive salary in major metropolitan areas, and a million dollars isn't enough to even buy an entire house in most of those areas.

My former boss made $300,000 in 1994, and he was just a medium-range executive with Citibank.  And my house (not big, not luxurious) costs $700,000.

Melba (Posted 07.28.08 5:59 PM) Report Abuse

Since all he has to do is stay with eBay for one year, its really like he's getting paid $1.365 million plus.  Not too shabby for a reputation manager / image consultant with no real responsibilities other than eBay spin.  Of course, if he replaces the stupid 'It' campaign than he will have earned every penny.

Chris (Posted 07.28.08 6:01 PM) Report Abuse

Agree with Oscar!  $1M may not buy alot, but it will buy something and there are LOTS of other people who live in the Bay area that aren't given $1M to buy a house to live there.  A more realistic bonus  would be for Ebay to pay his closing costs and prepaids and traveling expenses, perhaps following the same relocation expenses that most other companies offer for employees.  Just because he is an Executive, he shouldn't be given the money to purchase a house.  

PS (Posted 07.28.08 6:02 PM) Report Abuse

Ebay has become a mess, they made changes that were not USER/SELLER friendly, they raised fees with the pretence of higher cost of bandwith, what a crock and those of us that were long time sellers took our customers with us.  We're actually making more money on a 9.95 a month website storefront than we did with ebay.  I guess ebay didn't think sellers were smart enough to keep a customer database.  In the 5 years we were on we accumulated a database of 200,000 people. And now have just a 9.95 fee plus paypal fees, alot easier to deal with than having to help pay for an overpriced exec.

Marcy (Posted 07.28.08 6:04 PM) Report Abuse

Who cares?  Ebay is a company owned by shareholders.  If the shareholders don't agree they can vote against such compensation.  

jdoe (Posted 07.28.08 6:06 PM) Report Abuse

Where is the story? 300K salary is chicken scratch for company of that size. 1M house? Not much for that area. This deal is one of the most frugal i've seen. Kudos to Ebay for having reasonably compensated execs.

N. Staub (Posted 07.28.08 6:08 PM) Report Abuse

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