Lauren Thomas

My name is Lauren Thomas, and I am a deals and activism reporter here at The Wall Street Journal.

Yes.

Big headline number for sure.

GameStop officially submitted a proposal, a $56 billion proposal to acquire eBay.

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.

walk through what ultimately led you to eBay?

As an M&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?

Totally.

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 role.

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.

Ryan Cohen had been building a stake in this company, had by then built a pretty significant stake, making him 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.