Meg Whitman, Maynard Webb and Jeff Jordan in 2003. By Fall, only Whitman will remain.

The Wall Street Journal said news that Jeff Jordan would step down as President of PayPal tapped fears of a "brain drain" at eBay, triggering a 5.3% plunge in eBay's shares (paid subscription required: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115220193310099640.html). As reported in AuctionBytes on Thursday, the last 18 months have seen a great deal of executive movement at eBay, especially following the acquisition of Skype last year (http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m07/i06/s01).

BusinessWeek's Rob Hof was skeptical over the timing of the announcement of Jordan's departure, saying the decision was "clearly pretty recent. Otherwise, I wonder if Rajiv Dutta, who moved to London early this year to be president of eBay's Skype unit, would have done so, only to find himself moving back to head PayPal now" (http://digbig.com/4ktrp).

eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said Jordan had been having discussions informally with eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who first hired Jordan in 1990 when she worked at Disney. Jordan has spent 7 years giving everything to two businesses, Durzy said - eBay and PayPal. He's an incredibly hard worker and has been really successful. While it's never a good time, Jordan was confident of where the PayPal business was and is happy with PayPal's growth, Durzy said.