eBay’s board of directors has formally rejected GameStop’s unsolicited bid to acquire the e-commerce company, bringing an unceremonious end to one of the stranger corporate stories of the year.
In a press release issued Tuesday morning, eBay’s board called the proposal from GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen “neither credible nor attractive,” citing concerns about GameStop’s financing plan, the operational risks of a combined company, and questions about GameStop’s own governance and executive incentives.
The rejection letter, signed by eBay board chairman Paul Pressler, was unambiguous. The board said it had considered eBay’s standalone prospects and concluded that the company was better positioned on its own, with a clear strategy and management team already in place.
For anyone who has been following this saga, eBay’s skepticism was entirely predictable.
GameStop, the mall-based video game retailer that became a legendary meme stock after a Reddit-fueled short squeeze in 2021, announced on May 3 that it was making a surprise bid to acquire eBay at $125 per share — a 46 percent premium over eBay’s closing price on Feb. 4 — valuing the deal at approximately $55.5 billion.
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GameStop’s answer to acquiring a company worth nearly five times as much involved a combination of its $9.4 billion in cash and liquid assets, up to $20 billion in third-party financing from TD Securities, and GameStop common stock for the remaining balance. The company had also quietly accumulated a 5 percent stake in eBay in the months prior to the announcement.
The financing math left analysts unconvinced, and CEO Ryan Cohen did little to help matters. In a now-viral CNBC interview, Cohen was repeatedly pressed on how GameStop would get to $55 billion and repeatedly said he didn’t understand the question.
When Mashable reached out to GameStop for clarification, the company responded by sending a link to Cohen’s pinned post on X, in which he wrote, “selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay.” He subsequently posted that his personal eBay account had hit its $50,000 monthly listing limit and had been permanently suspended, at which point he announced on X that he was on the phone with customer support. It was, in the words of our own reporting, leaning into the spin.
As for what GameStop planned to do with eBay if it actually got it, the pitch centered on using GameStop’s roughly 1,600 remaining retail locations as physical hubs for authentication, intake, and order fulfillment. Which is plain terms, means trying to compete with Amazon. A tactic eBay had already tried to do a decade prior. Part of the company’s recent resurgence has been its shift back to being an online marketplace for buying collectibles and antiques.
eBay, for its part, had no prior contact with GameStop before receiving the unsolicited proposal and had indicated it would review whether the bid constituted an actionable offer. As of this morning, the board has made its answer clear.
