Remix.run Logo
this_user 5 hours ago

Cohen doesn't even really have the money for his. He doesn't have enough Gamestop shares authorised for the stock portion of his bid, and it is unclear if he can even get the proposed increase to 2.5bn shares voted through - or whether that would even be enough. He also doesn't have a firm commitment for most of the cash portion. He has a letter from TD stating that they believe they can raise the necessary $20bn, but they also assume that the debt of the combined entity would still be investment grade, which is highly doubtful due to the large debt load the transaction would generate. "Not credible" is exactly what this bid is.

What's more, this deal is completely unattractive from the POV of the Ebay shareholders, because they basically get three things: 1) Ebay takes on debt to pay out $62.50 per share in cash, 2) They own Gamestop, 3) Cohen becomes CEO of Ebay. The first thing they could easily do on their down. The second thing they could also do, but Gamestop's actual business is close to worthless. The third thing would replace Ebay's successful management with a guy who has barely done anything in five years of running his current company.

The only one who wins here is Cohen, because he gets a new job, and the transaction would most likely count towards the market cap milestone in his current moonshot pay package that he has no way of achieving otherwise.