If anyone else, like me, thought eBay owned PayPal:
> On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. On September 30, 2014, eBay Inc. announced the divestiture of PayPal as an independent company, which was completed on July 20, 2015.
Yes. The Masters of the Universe decided that there was "value to be unlocked" by spinning off PayPal. Or at least...someone's spreadsheet said there was value to be unlocked..
And there actually was... PayPal itself is still (after this news) worth more than both eBay and PayPal were as a single company. Add both together and it was an obvious win.
I think to win that game you have to wait a few years and then compare the aggregate value vs the pre-split value adjusted for average sector gain over the period.
Strange that since eBay probably owns a lot of PayPal stock that they would try to tank Paypal. Maybe eBay sold their Paypal stock holdings ahead of this change.
eBay has no stake in PayPal, that was the whole purpose of splitting it out. Shareholders of eBay before the split were given PYPL shares on a 1:1 basis.
I remembered that eBay spun off PayPal, but I thought PayPal still owned x.com. But after checking, it looks like Elon Musk held onto that domain before selling his steak in PayPal.
> On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. On September 30, 2014, eBay Inc. announced the divestiture of PayPal as an independent company, which was completed on July 20, 2015.