Meg Whitman, the eBay chief executive, apparently is planning to retire from the online auction giant after ten years at the helm.

Ms Whitman, who has run has world's best-known auction site since 1998, has gradually been delegating responsibilities and may make a decision about her departure within weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

John Donahue, 47, the head of the company's auction business division, is tipped as the candidate mostly likely to succeed her, according to sources cited by the paper.

Ms Whitman, 51, is one of Silicon Valley's most high-profile chief executives, and one of only a few remaining from a time when the internet industry was in its infancy.

She joined the company at a time when Google, the search firm, was barely launched, when the web was dominated by now barely mentioned names such as Alta Vista, and when the development of social networking revolution spawned by sites such as Facebook and MySpace was still five years away.

An eBay spokesman declined to comment on the report.

Mr Whitman's departure - reportedly of her own choosing - comes at a critical time for eBay, whose core auction business has struggled against slowing growth rates in recent quarters.

In October, the company reported a 30 per cent increase in quarterly revenues — to $1.89 billion (£970 million), but analysts have expressed concern at the 5 per cent decline in the number of items listed in the site, as well as the failure to grow the number of users, which remains relatively static at 83 million.

Last year the company announced that it was taking a $1.4 billion charge in relation to Skype, the telephony service it bought for $2.6 billion in 2005 and for which it admitted it had drastically overpaid.

Ms Whitman once said that no boss should stay in charge of a company for more than a decade, and she apparently has been trying out different executives in senior roles to groom a successor.

Her net worth is estimated by Forbes at $1.4 billion.

Ms Whitman made her name as manager of the pre-school division at Hasbro, and joined eBay in 1998, three years after it was founded by the entrepreneur Pierre Omidyear, when the company had 30 employees.

Under her stewardship the company has had 40 consecutive quarters of growth.

Profit has increased every year, and last year revenues were $5.97 billion — a significant gain on the $86 million it made in 1998.

Since debuting on Nasdaq at $1.97, eBay's stock has risen to close Friday at $28.33, having reached a high in late 2004 of $58.21.

Mr Donohue, a former managing director at Bain, the consultancy, was recruited by Ms Whitman to become head of the company's auction business in February 2005. The pair had worked together at Bain years previously.

He has led several of the company's important initiatives and presided over internal discussions two years ago about how eBay should deal with the growing threat of Google.

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