GameStop (NYSE: GME) CEO Ryan Cohen has publicly attacked eBay’s (NASDAQ: EBAY) leadership after the e-commerce giant’s board rejected his $56 billion unsolicited takeover proposal.
eBay’s board dismissed the cash-and-stock offer as “neither credible nor attractive,” raising serious doubts about the financing structure behind the bid.
GameStop proposed to acquire all of eBay’s common stock at $125.00 per share, split evenly between 50% cash and 50% GameStop common stock.
The offer represented a 46% premium to eBay’s unaffected closing price and a 27% premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average price at the time of submission.
eBay Chairman Paul Pressler, in a letter to Cohen, cited uncertainty around financing, operational risks, GameStop’s governance structure, and the potential impact on eBay’s long-term growth trajectory.
A central concern for eBay’s board was how GameStop, whose market capitalization is roughly one-quarter the size of its target, could realistically fund a deal of this magnitude.
Cohen has pointed to a $20 billion debt commitment letter from TD Bank, though that financing is contingent on the combined company maintaining an investment-grade credit rating.
Cohen escalated his public campaign against eBay’s leadership, calling the company’s board and management a “bunch of losers” with “perverse financial incentives” who had failed to modernize what he described as a great asset.
Cohen argued that directors who collected $4 million in fees last year blocked the deal to protect their own compensation, rather than acting in the best interests of shareholders.
Adding further drama to the standoff, eBay suspended Cohen’s personal seller account two days after the takeover bid was announced, though the ban was subsequently lifted after Cohen had begun auctioning personal items on his eBay page to publicize the pursuit.
A GameStop shareholder has separately filed suit to halt a vote on Cohen’s $35 billion pay package, arguing the company must provide fuller disclosures before investors are asked to approve it.
Prediction markets are treating the deal as a long shot, with Polymarket bettors pricing the acquisition at roughly a 16% chance of closing, odds Cohen himself compared to those once assigned to Donald Trump’s first presidential run.
The coming weeks will determine whether Cohen moves toward a formal tender offer or a direct shareholder push, either of which would bypass the eBay board entirely and force a public vote on the rejected proposal.
