HONG Kong-listed Tom.com is going to announce its takeover of eBay’s China division and its PayPal service, the 21st Century Business Herald reported today, citing a well-informed source.

Tom Group is the distributor of Skype, eBay’s online telephone service in China.

According to the previous agreement between eBay and Eachnet, eBay will sell its shares to the company before withdrawing from the Chinese market.

In March 2003, eBay bought one third of Eachnet’s stake by paying US$30 million, while Eachnet accounted for over 90 percent of China’s C2C market. It spent another US$150 million to buy the remaining shares of Eachnet in 2003.

However, in April, Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba.com—China’s largest B2B Website, established Taobao.com and later lured away many of eBay China’s customers by offering a free online trading platform, while Eachnet collected a commission of up to 8 yuan (US$1) for each item sold on its Website.

Posted: 09|26|06 at 10:05 am. Filed under: Auction News.