EBay sets out to regain its magic touch

It has been clear to investors for some time that eBay Inc. has been losing the luster that turned the online auctioneer into an e-commerce bellwether.

Now, CEO Meg Whitman is finally acknowledging things have been off kilter and is hoping to set things right by raising fees on the online stores that had been diverting traffic from eBay’s auctions.

“We are trying to get back to the essence of eBay,” Whitman said Wednesday during an interview.

But its shares fell $1.27, or 4.9 percent, to close at $24.66 Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, a day after the interview and its latest earnings report.

Simply matching estimates hasn’t been good enough for investors, who have been thrashing eBay’s stock since the end of 2004. Whitman also hopes to make amends with Wall Street by spending up to $2 billion to buy back eBay’s shares during the next two years.

It marks the first stock buyback in eBay’s nearly eight-year history as a publicly held company.

But the amount budgeted for buying back eBay’s shares looks minuscule next to the $40 billion in stockholder wealth that has evaporated since the end of 2004 as the company’s stock lost more than half its value.

“Airbus announced orders for 29 jets on Thursday, as U.S. leasing company CIT Group Inc. and Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air signed deals with the European aircraft maker.

Unveiling the deals on the fourth day of the Farnborough International Airshow, Airbus said that Wizz Air has signed an order to increase its all-Airbus fleet with 20 additional A320s at Farnborough Airshow in England in a deal worth around $1.4 billion at list prices. The airline ordered 12 A320 aircraft plus 12 options a year ago.

Airbus also revealed that CIT is buying five A330-200 and four A320 planes.

“Toyota has no interest in blocking or joining the proposed partnership between General Motors and the Renault-Nissan alliance, the Japanese automaker’s president said Thursday.

The remarks from Toyota Motor Corp. President Katsuaki Watanabe come at a time when GM is in talks about a possible partnership with an alliance between Renault SA of France and Nissan Motor Co.

“We are not thinking about participating,” he told reporters at a Tokyo hotel when asked about whether Toyota may either join or block the talks among GM, Renault and Nissan.