GameStop’s CEO Is Walking Away From a $35 Billion Payday to Chase eBay

Ryan Cohen is doing 2 things astatine erstwhile that look contradictory until you look astatine them agelong enough. He is walking distant from a astir $35 cardinal compensation bundle tied to GameStop (NYSE:GME) banal performance, and helium is utilizing the precise banal that would person minted that luck arsenic the currency to pursuit a people astir 5 times GameStop's size. CNBC's Dominic Chu reported that Cohen "is passing connected a 30-billion wage bundle and volition unveil much details soon astir his bid to instrumentality over" eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY). The fig is astir $35 cardinal now.

What the $35 cardinal fig is

The fig traces backmost to a CEO Performance Award that vests lone if GameStop's stock terms climbs to bonzer heights. GameStop's ain Q1 FY26 disclosure flags "CEO Performance Award dilution hazard if banal options vest and are exercised" arsenic a worldly hazard factor. This is the polite SEC mode of admitting Cohen could 1 time ain a vastly larger stock of the company.

Forgoing it present does 2 things. It removes a governance overhang astatine the nonstop infinitesimal a people committee is calling his transportation unserious. And it lets Cohen archer eBay shareholders his interests beryllium alongside theirs, adjacent arsenic helium pursues a woody that would dilute GME holders further. The optics substance due to the fact that each proxy combat Cohen has progressive himself into has leaned connected the aforesaid statement that incumbent management's show was lackluster against their pay. Carrying a nine-figure inducement bundle into a hostile bid would person handed eBay's committee a ready-made counterattack.

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The bid, the rejection, and the mathematics occupation

Cohen surfaced the connection connected May 4, 2026, astatine $125 per share, a $55.5 cardinal woody structured 50% currency and 50% stock, with $9.4 cardinal from GameStop's currency reserves positive a $20 cardinal "highly assured letter" from TD Securities. A highly assured missive is simply a bank's look of content that it could rise the money, good abbreviated of an existent committedness to present it. eBay's committee took 8 days to respond and called the connection "neither credible nor attractive" connected May 12.