Dive Brief:

• eBay Inc. on Monday formally rejected two Icahn Enterprises LP employees nominated to its board by activist investor Carl Icahn, who is stirring up trouble at the auction and e-commerce retailer.

• Icahn, who owns 2% of the company, has been urging that Paypal be spun off from eBay in order to realize the payment system’s true value. He has also accused eBay of inferior corporate governance — to the tune of $4 billion.

• eBay has been fighting back, and on Monday urged stockholders to also reject the Icahn nominees.

Dive Insight:

Things are getting heated between eBay and Carl Icahn, with eBay CEO John Donohoe and board members including Marc Andreessen publicly trading barbs with him. It’s been about a month now since Icahn started in on eBay about splitting off Paypal. So far, it’s just creating a lot of bad news and bad blood, without much sense of direction. Stocks dipped at the news that Icahn was at it again, but most observers don’t believe much will change without some real support emerging for Icahn’s stance. Meanwhile, most observers don’t believe much will change any time soon about Icahn’s stance, either.