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Four years after leading a charge to make PayPal more nimble by severing it from eBay, investor Carl Icahn is reportedly dissolving his investments in the payment company.
Icahn originally pushed for eBay and PayPal to separate in 2014, arguing eBay's ownership of the payment company made other partners reluctant to collaborate with PayPal out of competitive concerns. Reuters reported the sale of Icahn's stake, as well as dumping his position in AIG.
Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn attends the Leveraged Finance Fights Melanoma charity event in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. Lyft Inc. is worth more than its recent $2 billion valuation, based on the $50 billion value of larger car-hailing rival Uber Technologies Inc., Icahn said, after he led a fundraising round at Lyft last week. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Carl Icahn
Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
eBay's management initially pushed back against Icahn by arguing the auction/payment company tie-up was inseparable and noting eBay's earlier attempt to build its own payment engine failed. eBay also reported PayPal received most of its digital payments volume from eBay purchases. eBay initially purchased PayPal in 2002, beginning a long relationship of intertwined services.
But the companies separated later in 2014, with PayPal's management changing its tune by trumpeting an independent PayPal's ability to quickly add new digital transaction technology and merchant partners to compete with Square, Amazon and Walmart as well as pursue its goal of supporting payments inside physical stores.
That take turned out to be correct, as PayPal has reported strong earnings driven by its expanding Venmo P2P app and its Braintree software development business.
PayPal and eBay had retained a nominal payment processing relationship, though that too has begun to wane, as eBay chose to gradually shift processing to Adyen over the next five years.
Icahn, who dumped his eBay position after the PayPal split, has been gradually selling off his PayPal position more recently while adding to his positions in Herbalife and Hertz. Icahn's investing career dates to the 1980s, when he was known as a "corporate raider."
More recently, Icahn, who has served as an advisor to Donald Trump, has been the subject of controversy for moves in the steel industry around the time of U.S. tariff announcements.
Democratic lawmakers made the stablecoin markup into a marathon event, leading off with amendments that would have addressed concerns about conflicts of interest between elected officials like President Donald Trump and stablecoin oversight.
Visa and American Express are both reportedly trying to lure Apple's lucrative credit businesses away from Mastercard. But the battle over processing rights is just as much about accessing the technology company's digital wallet as it is about boosting transactions.
Regulators should approve the deal because post-merger, the servicing market remains fragmented and the mortgage origination business is even more dispersed.
The state's banking commissioner said the married founders of Valuex Research and Valuex Fintech used investor money for rent, plastic surgery and shopping instead of funding a promised investing tool.
With South Florida's economy expected to continue outperforming the rest of the nation, Banesco USA is laying plans to extend its reach into Broward, the wealthy and populous county just north of its Coral Gables home base.
A three-judge panel will hear an appeal by the Trump administration of a preliminary injunction that has blocked the government from dissolving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
