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Lauren Thomas
My name is Lauren Thomas and I am a deals and activism reporter here at the Wall Street Journal.
Jessica Mendoza
And Lauren, we're talking to you because there was a proposed merger and acquisition proposed deal that caught a lot of people's eyes recently. Can you tell us what that is?
Lauren Thomas
Yes. Big headline number for sure. GameStop officially submitted a proposal, a $56 billion proposal to acquire E.
Jessica Mendoza
GameStop, which is worth about $11 billion, was offering to buy a company four times that size, eBay, the commerce giant. What did you think when you heard that?
Lauren Thomas
Yeah, I mean, probably like everyone else was scratching my head a little bit. You don't often see these smaller companies coming out and trying to buy much larger businesses. So that in and of itself, I think provides some shock value.
Jessica Mendoza
So Lauren called the man behind this audacious plan, ryan Cohen, the CEO of
Lauren Thomas
GameStop, walk through, like, what ultimately led you to ebay?
Ryan Cohen
I think that ebay, under my watch, it really comes down to like, scale being able to do something big.
Lauren Thomas
Right.
Ryan Cohen
And I think ebay, there's nobody who is more qualified, based on my experience, to run the ebay business. I could turn that business into something worth significantly more than what ebay is today.
Lauren Thomas
Yeah.
Ryan Cohen
And I can grow it and I can make it a lot more money in a very short period of time. And it could be like a legit competitor to Amazon.
Jessica Mendoza
For Lauren, the deal raises a big question.
Lauren Thomas
As an M and a reporter, anytime you see a deal, I'm always asking myself, well, how are they going to pull this off, particularly in terms of financing? How are they going to pay for it?
Jessica Mendoza
Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, May 8th. Coming up on the show, GameStop makes a play for ebay.
Lauren Thomas
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Jessica Mendoza
Ryan Cohen got a start with the online pet supply store Chewy, a company he co founded in 2011 and sold to PetSmart. Since then, he's built an online following as an investor. And what is the allure around Ryan Cohen? I mean, he's not exactly a household name, but he is kind of a cult figure. Totally.
Lauren Thomas
I think why so many people ultimately have found themselves connecting to Ryan and being drawn toward Ryan is he does, in a lot of ways, kind of represent the everyday, average Joe kind of trader investor. He's just kind of your anti Wall street guy. That's definitely struck a chord with a lot of people, particularly younger people coming up in this world and trying to find ways to make money on their own.
Jessica Mendoza
Cohen built that reputation in 2020 when he took an interest in the company that would come to define his career, GameStop.
Lauren Thomas
Ryan Cohen had been building a stake in this company, had by then built a pretty significant stake, making him, you know, one of the biggest shareholders in GameStop. And he basically showed up and started pushing for changes. He wanted new management, he wanted GameStop to rethink things strategically. And it was really an activist play. In large part. He was there. He was trying to get inside the company himself, you know, in some sort of leadership position.
Jessica Mendoza
In January 2021, GameStop offered Cohen a seat on the board. And around that time, the company's share price exploded.
Lauren Thomas
It went crazy. Exactly.
News Reporter
Shares of GameStop were up 134% today,
Jessica Mendoza
continuing an unlikely rally, the battle between
Lauren Thomas
short sellers and a group posting on Reddit.
Ryan Cohen
With the stock shooting up and fluctuating
News Reporter
wildly, GameStop shares have now risen some 700% year to date.
Jessica Mendoza
Retail investors, especially people on Reddit, took the company's stock price from less than $5 a share in 2020 to a high of almost $500 a share.
Lauren Thomas
Ryan Cohen was kind of became part of this community and really spoke to this community of people that started rallying behind him. And he kind of became the chosen
Ryan Cohen
one, the meme overlord. In Ryan Cohen, the meme king of Wall street is striking again.
Jessica Mendoza
He is the meme stock king because of his role. A few months after joining, Cohen became chairman of the board and then became CEO in 2023. Since taking the helm, he's focused on making GameStop profitable.
Lauren Thomas
Under Ryan Cohen's leadership, GameStop has shuttered thousands of stores, you know, in malls all across the US And Canada. And so, you know, when you talk to Ryan, it's all about cutting costs, you know, Getting the business profitable again, where it's producing cash flow.
Jessica Mendoza
The company has managed to turn a Profit and currently GameStop trades at around $25 a share. Pretty healthy, but far from the company's meme. Stock high and sales have fallen in recent quarters.
Lauren Thomas
But that is probably in part, you know, why Ryan Cohen is looking to do something big. Because he, you know, from his perspective, he needs to make big moves, possibly pursue a big deal in order to keep growing the business.
Jessica Mendoza
And you spoke to Cohen over the weekend about his proposed deal with ebay. What did he say? What is his business case for it?
Lauren Thomas
So, in talking to Ryan Cohen, he laid out the case for why he wants to do this deal. He told me this is a company that he thinks could not just be worth 50, 56 billion dollars, but it could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars if he was running it.
Ryan Cohen
I'm thinking about turning ebay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Lauren Thomas
Yeah.
Ryan Cohen
Then we'll see what happens.
Lauren Thomas
Right, Right.
Ryan Cohen
I'm focused on. I'm going to be as focused on ebay and as personally involved as I've been in the GameStop turnaround for. For the next few years.
Lauren Thomas
Right now that this has started to get out, like, maybe there's like, some negative, like, criticism out there. Oh, how does he pull this off? How would you respond to that? I guess,
Ryan Cohen
well, look at GameStop.
Lauren Thomas
Right.
Ryan Cohen
All the naysayers.
Lauren Thomas
Yeah.
Ryan Cohen
GameStop is going to make a lot of money this year. Yeah. So who would have ever guessed that? No Wall street analyst, Nobody.
Lauren Thomas
Right.
Ryan Cohen
Nobody in the media would have ever guessed. And by the way, I wouldn't have guessed either.
Lauren Thomas
Right.
Ryan Cohen
But we cut a lot of costs and the company is doing well. So imagine going in and basically taking that playbook of just, like, cost efficiency and a maniacal focus on cost to eBay. Because GameStop, it doesn't deserve to be alive.
Lauren Thomas
Yeah.
Ryan Cohen
And it's making a ton of money. So imagine how much more money ebay could be making.
Jessica Mendoza
Cohen was clear the GameStop playbook slash and restructure is what he's hoping to bring to ebay. He says he would cut costs and improve earnings by putting the two companies under one roof, since they already have some overlap, including a focus on selling collectibles. And Cohen says GameStop's physical stores and ebay's vast online reach would complement each other.
Ryan Cohen
Ebay today is doing the same thing it was doing a long time ago. We can leverage GameStop's physical infrastructure
Lauren Thomas
and
Ryan Cohen
stores essentially as both like authentication and intake Sensors.
Lauren Thomas
And Ryan Cohen has said ebay is a great company and they've got a lot going for them. I think he just thinks they're not doing enough.
Ryan Cohen
Ebay is bloated. They have a very bloated cost structure. They're under earning, and I can make the business a lot more money for the two.
Lauren Thomas
And so I think he views it as a great digital platform where he could get in, you know, get his hands dirty. And it's a starting point to build something much larger than what it is.
Jessica Mendoza
But ebay was not soliciting any offers. And since Cohen went public with his proposal, ebay has said very little about the deal, except that they received the offer and are reviewing it. And Lauren's reporting suggests that ebay may not be interested in a deal because the company is doing pretty well on its own.
Lauren Thomas
In terms of the conversations I've had with folks that know ebay really well, people that work with ebay have worked with ebay in the past, are very surprised and view this as a long shot. And I think a lot of what I've been hearing from the ebay camp is just look at how our business is doing. Like, we're doing great. We're doing great on our own. We're not a company that's, like, in trouble, about to go bankrupt. Like, no, no, no. So it's, it's. It's not necessary from their perspective.
Jessica Mendoza
Besides, ebay has already been shoring up its business by cutting costs, acquiring a fashion reseller, and even getting into AI, because who isn't?
Lauren Thomas
So Jamie Ioannoni, since taking over as CEO, has made some really bold moves to get the company back on solid ground and to help turn things around. And some cost cuts have been part of that. You know, we've seen. Seen some layoffs in corporate restructuring while he's been CEO, and I think another pillar has really been thinking about who is the ebay customer and really making sure that the company goes after that younger consumer today, like every other business wants to have. But ebay in particular, has really been laser focused on making sure that there are products on their website that younger shoppers are looking for and want to really keep that excitement going there.
Jessica Mendoza
So does ebay need the turnaround that Cohen says he can give the company?
Lauren Thomas
You could argue yes and no at the same time. I mean, sure, he says he could scale this thing into hundreds. A company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Like that sounds great in theory. Sure. You know, but is ebay necessarily. Could they ever be a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And maybe they don't want to be, you know, maybe there's a sweet spot that's smaller than that. And so I think it remains to be seen, like just, just how much could ebay scale? How much could eBay scale, and how much should they scale at the end of the day?
Jessica Mendoza
But for Cohen, his bid for eBay is part of a far more ambitious vision. That's next.
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Jessica Mendoza
To anyone that doesn't follow GameStop closely, its bid to buy ebay may sound strange. But Lauren says Ryan Cohen has been thinking about it since at least January.
Lauren Thomas
Ryan basically told me at the time that he was looking at big deals. He had ambitions to pursue big M and A through GameStop. He wanted to try to go after a large company. So he'd definitely been laying the groundwork that this was at least something he was thinking about. He has GameStop now. Again, this is a company that's got a market cap of say, 11 billion, $12 billion on any given day. But he wants something much bigger than that.
Jessica Mendoza
Cohen's vision is to build a corporate empire.
Lauren Thomas
Ryan Cohen, just as an investor, has always hinted at this idea of, you know, being like a Warren Buffett and that he's taken from people like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and how they think about investing.
Jessica Mendoza
Buffett and Munger famously took a beleaguered textile manufacturer called Berkshire Hathaway and used it to acquire companies like See's Candies, Geico, and BNSF Railway.
Lauren Thomas
And you look at a Berkshire Hathaway today, it's a big conglomerate, it's a big holding company, and it has all of these other businesses that are very different within it. And so I Do think that's part of what he's trying to do here with GameStop and eBay.
Jessica Mendoza
And Cohn's goal is to take GameStop from an $11 billion company to a $100 billion conglomerate that's about the size of companies like CVS, Hyundai or Comcast. Call it GameStop Hathaway. And if Cohen succeeds, he could make a lot of money.
Lauren Thomas
One reason we know that Ryan might have his sights set on that hundred billion dollar market cap is because the company GameStop actually adjusted his compensation package earlier this year, which basically says, you know, he's not, he's not taking any salary, he's not taking any pay unless he hits some of these financial targets, which to many people seemed like a total moonshot. And so, you know, if he, again, hypothetically, he were to achieve, you know, these big profitability targets and market value of over $100 billion, he would be compensated and rewarded as a result.
Jessica Mendoza
A merger with ebay would be the first big step toward that hundred billion dollar goal. But the big question around the deal is still, how is Cohen planning to pay for this massive acquisition? GameStop has about $9 billion on its balance sheet. Cohen says the company can get up to $20 billion in debt financing from TD Bank. If you're doing the math with me, that very much does not add up to the proposed $56 billion acquisition. Cohen was asked about that math on CNBC the day after he announced his proposal. And he didn't really offer a solution.
Lauren Thomas
This was his first interview seeing what he had to say. And it really, you know, it really, it didn't give much, I guess. I think people walked away from it kind of wondering, like, what exactly was that? As the interview went on and on, you know, you could see that he was less and less interested in kind of engaging with the anchors.
CNBC Interviewer
Sort of walk us through how, how you could get to that price and how it would work.
Ryan Cohen
It's on our website. It's half cash, half stock. But, but the details are, are on our website.
CNBC Interviewer
Can you help? I've read them, but can you help our audience understand them?
Ryan Cohen
Yeah. What, which part exactly?
Lauren Thomas
And I think it was uncomfortable and awkward at times and there were moments when Ryan would just draw a pause and not really respond to the questions that were being asked of him.
CNBC Interviewer
I'm just trying to understand where the rest of the money would come from.
Ryan Cohen
It's half cash, half stock.
CNBC Interviewer
I hear you. I'm just saying that that math doesn't get you to the, to the price that you're offering.
Lauren Thomas
And so it was, you know, it was unique. It was not necessarily. It's not the interview that you would expect a CEO to be given the morning after they make a $56 billion takeover proposal.
Jessica Mendoza
To be clear, Cohen doesn't have to have all the financing figured out at this stage. And there have been plenty of successful takeovers where the buyer didn't have all the money to start with. Think of Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter or Paramount's recent acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery. So Cohen still has time to work out the kinks, and Lauren says there are a couple ways to do it. One, obviously, is to get more money.
Lauren Thomas
Could he bring in outside investors? Could. Hypothetically, you see some private equity firms get interested in this deal and say, hey, I want to put a couple billion dollars in. One other idea that has come up is the idea of sovereign wealth funds getting involved in the deal. And I would imagine that those are the kinds of conversations, now that this is public, that are taking place behind the scenes.
Jessica Mendoza
Another way that Cohen could shore up the finances of the deal is by issuing more stocks of GameStop to give to ebay, though that's a risky move because it could make the price drop for people who already own stock.
Lauren Thomas
But at the same time, I think the GameStop shareholder base is so unique. It's been unique, really, ever since Ryan Cohen got involved. A lot of people that hold shares in GameStop are loyal to him. And so I do think it's a situation in which you could see him almost getting away with it to a certain extent, given people are generally so supportive of him within this community that he might have some more leeway to do it here.
Jessica Mendoza
Cohen told Lauren in their phone call that if eBay rejects his offer, he would consider mounting a hostile takeover.
Lauren Thomas
One more question for you. If ebay, if ebay is like, no, we're not interested in this. Have you thought through, like, possibilities of how could this play out if they
Ryan Cohen
don't engage right then? Well, yeah, they'll end up ultimately being a proxy fight, and we'll go direct the shareholders.
Lauren Thomas
Yeah. All right.
Jessica Mendoza
And the relationship seems to be at least somewhat frayed. On Wednesday, Cohen posted on X that ebay had suspended his account on the platform. He says he'd been selling collectibles on ebay to buy ebay. The account has since been reinstated. What does this tell you about Ryan Cohen himself and where his story might be going?
Lauren Thomas
Yeah, I think this is Ryan Cohen's next chapter. This is him coming out and saying, look, I'm still here. In fact, I'm back. I'm ready to do my next thing, like, hope you haven't forgotten about me, because here I am. And it just shows, you know, what he's been cooking up behind the scenes. You know, when people might have written him off as just the GameStop guy. He's. He's certainly proven that he's got much bigger ambitions.
Jessica Mendoza
By the way, if you want to hear more about the Gamestop saga, we actually made a whole series about it called to the Moon. The link is in the show notes. That's all for today. Friday, May 8th. Additional reporting in this episode by Peter Rudiger. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. The show's made by Laura Benshoff, Kathryn Brewer, Pia Gidkari, Max Green, Sophie Codner, Ryan Knudsen, Matt Kwong, Colin McNulty, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Allen Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singhy, Jeevika Verma, Katherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis and me, Jessica Mendoza. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by so Wiley. Additional music this week from Katherine Anderson, Marcus Bagala, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Griffin Tanner, so Wiley and Blue Dot sessions. Fact checking this week by Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you on Monday.
Date: May 8, 2026
Hosts: Jessica Mendoza, Ryan Knutson
Guest: Lauren Thomas (WSJ Deals & Activism Reporter), Ryan Cohen (CEO, GameStop)
This episode dives into GameStop's audacious $56 billion bid to buy eBay—a company over four times its own size. Hosts Jessica Mendoza and Lauren Thomas break down the logic (and the skepticism) behind the move, profiling GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen and exploring whether he can transform a meme-stock underdog into a business empire, or if the whole plan is just, well, too wild to work.
GameStop’s Offer:
Immediate Skepticism:
Background:
GameStop Transformation:
Cohen’s Vision:
Synergy Pitch:
Current State of eBay:
Ambition to Build a Conglomerate:
Personal Financial Incentive:
Massive Gap:
Awkward Interviews:
Possible Solutions:
If eBay rejects the offer, Cohen is prepared for a proxy fight or hostile takeover.
(19:46) Ryan Cohen: "Well, yeah, they'll end up ultimately being a proxy fight, and we'll go direct to shareholders."
Public Tensions:
This episode offers a deep, lively look at Ryan Cohen’s bold bid to vault GameStop into the business big leagues by taking over eBay—a plan that’s as eye-catching as it is unlikely. With memorable exchanges and candid interviews, it’s a story of ambition, image, and the perpetual allure (and possible delusion) of the next big corporate empire.