• Forbes.com, Tuesday, April 10, 2007 11:01 AM

Is it time for eBay chief Meg Whitman to go? She's been running the Web retail giant for nine years, approaching the one-decade deadline she set at the outset of her reign. It's not exactly a secret that eBay's growth continues to slow, while its stock has failed to rebound.

If she decided to leave, there are plenty of other options out there, but Whitman may already be moving in a certain direction. The eBay chief is putting plenty of time in working for Massachusetts' Republican Governor Mitt Romney as the 2008 presidential hopeful's national finance co-chair. And she's been doing a fine job, too, if first quarter fund-raising statistics are anything to go by. Out of nowhere, Romney emerged on top of the Republican pile, raising $23 million in the first quarter. Romney and Whitman, by the way, are old colleagues from working at Bain Consulting in the 1980s.

The official word from eBay is that Whitman is staying. "As she has stated in the past, [Whitman] has no plans to leave eBay," a company spokesperson said. "She actually plans on staying at eBay for the long term." Meanwhile, Wall Street anxiously awaits word on the company's first-quarter performance. Analysts expectations are mixed: "eBay's been a slowing growth story for some time," Deutsche Bank analyst Jeetil Patel says. "The company hasn't really changed with the times...[its] playbook [is] getting old and dusty."

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