EBay Can Give GameStop $56 Billion of Bad Feedback
Could this be your new eBay store?
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
GameStop Corp.’s attempted takeover of eBay Inc. — a company four times its size — looks like fantasy dealmaking even for a soar-away meme stock. EBay shouldn’t find it hard to reject the unwanted approach. But there’s an awkward challenge embedded in this outlandish bid that should put the online auctioneer under pressure all the same.
Before the pandemic, GameStop was a struggling video-game retailer targeted by short sellers. An army of retail investors then pushed up the share price, burned the hedge funds and helped GameStop raise a decent cash cushion by selling new shares. Even after all that, the company’s market value was just $12 billion on Friday before it confirmed its appetite for eBay.