Rachel Warren

GameStop's offered $125 a share in a 50-50 cash and stock deal that actually represented about a 20% premium over eBay's Friday share price close.

But I think you also see a situation where Cohen has to convince the market that this combined entity would be more valuable than the two companies standalone.

And if the board were to refuse the offer, if the board of eBay refuses the offer, I think maybe the only path forward is some kind of a hostile proxy fight.

So this will be really interesting to see play out.

Yeah, that incentive structure is an interesting one to note.

I mean, you look back, right?

I mean, Cohen used this very methodical multi-step campaign to gain control of GameStop.

He began with a 9% stake that he boosted eventually to 13%.

And he used his position, you know, back in the day, he penned this blistering public letter to the board.

He was criticizing their lack of vision.

He labeled them as outdated.

He sort of pressured and forced the company to give him three board seats.

And, you know, obviously GameStop has seen some significant turnaround under his leadership.

But once he was inside the boardroom, he pushed out the legacy seat.

Oh, he was very successful to that end.

Now, his current move on eBay follows something of a similar pattern, but the scale of the target is really different here, right?

I mean, you had GameStop, very much a struggling retailer that he could fix with a few hundred million dollars injected into the business.

eBay is this established

e-commerce giant, it's worth tens of billions, requires a level of outside financing and market cooperation that he didn't need the first time.

So it's certainly not a one-to-one comparison, even though some of his strategy is definitely similar.