eBay’s Top Lawyer Leaving Company Amid Layoffs, Legal Battles

Marie Oh Huber, who spent nearly a decade as the top lawyer at eBay Inc., is stepping down from the e-commerce company to pursue other interests.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company disclosed Huber’s plans in a Thursday memo to employees from Jamie Iannone, its president and chief executive officer. Iannone didn’t give a reason for Huber’s decision to start a “new chapter” that will allow her to explore “personal interests and passions.”

Huber didn’t respond to a request for comment. An eBay spokeswoman said it doesn’t have a “targeted date” for Huber’s departure but that she’ll work with the company’s leadership team on a transition of her roles as chief legal officer, general counsel, and corporate secretary. A search process will consider internal and external candidates to succeed her, eBay said.

In January, eBay announced it would shed 9% of its workforce—about 1,000 employees—as part of an effort streamline its operations following the end of a pandemic-related business boom and competition from larger rivals like Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. That same month the company also agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Boston as part of a $3 million settlement related to criminal cyberstalking charges involving at least seven former eBay employees who were terminated in 2020.

The case saw James Baugh, eBay’s former senior director of safety and security, receive a five-year prison sentence in 2022 for his part leading a cyberstalking scheme to send cockroaches, spiders, a fetal pig carcass, and other materials to a pair of company critics. Other ex-eBay employees charged in the matter also entered guilty pleas and some former executives went unidentified. While Huber was never implicated in the affair, her name and that of other in-house lawyers came up in corporate communications released during the litigation.

Iannone, a former eBay executive who returned to the company to lead it in 2020, invited a former federal prosecutor that year in Rob Chesnut to address employees about corporate ethics. Chesnut, a compliance expert, former general counsel at Airbnb Inc., and current columnist for Bloomberg Law, once headed eBay’s global trust and safety department. Chesnut subsequently recommended that eBay hire Ryan Jones, a former colleague of his at Airbnb, last year as the company’s new chief risk and compliance officer.

Huber, who remained in her top legal role throughout the saga, initially joined eBay in mid-2015 as the company prepared to separate from PayPal Holdings Inc. Prior to eBay she served as the top lawyer at Agilent Technologies Inc. and worked at Hewlett-Packard Co. Huber began her career in private practice at Heller Ehrman and Dewey Ballantine, a pair of Big Law firms that no longer exist.

During her time at eBay, Huber became an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Iannone’s message announcing her exit credited Huber for her efforts in that arena and said her “thoughtfulness and optimism” will be missed in the C-suite as eBay navigates a changing business environment.

Huber owns roughly $11 million in eBay stock, according to Bloomberg data. She is also a member of the board at Portland General Electric Co, where Huber received almost $255,000 in total compensation last year, per the public utility’s most recent proxy statement. Huber wasn’t one of eBay’s six highest-paid executives during its most recent fiscal year.