The computer game retailer GameStop wants the online trading platform eBay take over. The company has made an offer of 56 billion dollars (47.7 billion euros) in the form of cash and shares, said GameStop boss Ryan Cohen Wall Street Journal. The aim is to build eBay as a competitor to the online retailer Amazon. He wants to run the merged company himself.
GameStop’s offer is therefore $125 per share, a 20 percent premium to Friday’s closing price. In after-hours trading, the price rose to as much as $119 after the report on the takeover offer. However, GameStop shares lost value. According to Cohen, a loan of around $20 billion has already been approved for the takeover. GameStop also has around $9 billion in cash on its balance sheet. Further financing is still unclear. GameStop already has a stake of around five percent in eBay.
Cohen wants to make eBay more valuable
“Ebay should be worth more and will be worth more,” said GameStop boss Ryan Cohen Wall Street Journal. “I plan to transform Ebay into a company that is worth several hundred billion dollars.” If Ebay’s management is not open to the takeover, he will contact the shareholders directly. The next general meeting is planned for June. Ebay did not initially respond.
GameStop had made headlines at the beginning of the corona pandemicbecause people organized themselves online, especially on the Reddit platform, and drove up the company’s shares through mass purchases. GameStop fans bet against hedge fundswho had bet on falling prices, and actually got them into trouble.
Ebay was particularly popular in the 2000s an important platform in online trading developed, but was by Amazon trumped. In 2025, the company had sales of $11.10 billion and net profit of $2.03 billion.