John Donahoe, who resigned last month after a decade at eBay, is taking a long break after the separation between his company and PayPal, The Huffington Post reported Monday (Aug. 17).
With a tenure marked by seven years at the helm of eBay as chief executive officer, The Post reported that Donahoe will be taking the next six months off with a focus on traveling. The former executive will visit Greece, Japan and, according to the site, “probably Bhutan.” And in addition he will also be attending a silent meditation retreat in California.
“It’s going to be healthy to take a little time and decompress,” Donahoe told The Post in an interview. “I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do next.”
The move toward silent retreats and decompression comes as Donahoe gets some distance between the events that marked the end of his time at eBay, as there was a “contentious public battle” with famed investor Carl Icahn, who had been vocal about the strategic direction of the company, namely that it should be split into two entities. Then, of course, eBay did indeed move to split into PayPal and its parent company.
In the interview with The Post, Donahoe remarked, “People may say, oh, did you flip-flop? … I know we were serving our customers,” he said in reference to the split. “It was a challenging period, but guess what? Running and competing in a dynamic Internet is always challenging. That was just a phase.”
Donahoe, with an eBay exit package worth an estimated $23 million, will remain with some vested interest in the post-split world, as he will be chair of PayPal’s board. Prior to his tenure at the tech giants, he spent nearly two dozen years as president and chief executive officer at Bain & Company.
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