eBay filed its preliminary proxy statement today in advance of the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on April 29.

At first look, I see two noteworthy aspects to it: first, proxies always generate interest in executive pay at any publicly traded company, and reading the footnotes in a proxy always is a must to understand the full story. That’s certainly true this year with eBay, because at first glance it seems like CEO John Donahoe and CFO Bob Swan were the only executives to receive a bonus in 2008, when other executives listed in the proxy got zero. However, in looking at the footnotes, no eBay executive officers received bonuses in 2008, based on the company’s performance. Payments shown for John and Bob actually are part of special retention bonuses they were given when hired by the company (again, it’s all in the footnotes). (More …)