At age 23, following his father's unexpected death, Wenig took over as CEO of then-struggling Nastech Pharmaceutical, raising $5 million in venture capital. After a year as CEO, he recruited a healthcare CEO and joined the law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore. In 1993, Wenig joined Reuters, where he remained until 2011, becoming the company's no. 2 executive. From June 2006 to April 2008, Wenig was COO and a board member of Reuters Group plc. He assisted with the of Reuters Group with the Thomson Corporation, and then from April 2008 to August 2011, Wenig was CEO of Thomson Reuters Markets. Wenig joined as president of eBay's global marketplaces business in September 2011. When Wenig joined eBay, it had 99 million active users. During his time as marketplace chief, this rose to nearly 160 million, by focusing on "m-commerce", shopping on mobile devices. In October 2014, it was announced that once the eBay/PayPal demerger was complete, Wenig would become CEO of eBay, replacing John Donahoe. Wenig took over as CEO in July 2015 after eBay spun offPayPal. In April 2018, he was elected to the General Motors' board of directors. In September 2019, Wenig unexpectedly stood down as CEO of eBay, "amid pressure from activist investors to break the company apart", and was immediately succeeded as interim CEO by Scott Schenkel, eBay's CFO. He received a $57 million golden parachute package.
Cyberstalking incident
A cyberstalking and harassment campaign against an online newsletter led to charges against six members of eBay's global security team. Wenig is not charged in the case. Following an article in an online newsletter about eBay's litigation against Amazon, Wenig texted a communications executive "If you are ever going to take her down... now is the time. Ebay's internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband. As the Company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure from the Company. In September 2019, Wenig announced that he would step down as CEO, and leave eBay.
Recognition
In 2019, Wenig was ranked #100 in a Forbeslist of America's 100 most innovative leaders. He was ranked eighth in Retail Info Systems' 2017 list of "Retail's 10 Best CEOs".
Personal life
On 28 March 1993, Wenig married Cindy Lee Horowitz, a lawyer, and fellow graduate of Columbia University School of Law in a Jewish ceremony at the Huntington Jewish Center.
