In a move that has set the M&A community talking on both sides of the Atlantic, eBay has firmly slammed the door on a $55.5bn (£40.9bn) unsolicited takeover approach from American video games retailer GameStop, branding the bid “neither credible nor attractive”.
The rejection, communicated in a sharply worded letter from eBay’s board to GameStop chief executive Ryan Cohen, will come as little surprise to anyone with a passing acquaintance of the relative scale of the two businesses. GameStop, the bricks-and-mortar gaming chain that found cult status in 2021 as the original “meme stock”, is roughly a quarter of the size of the online auction house it is attempting to swallow, a David-and-Goliath dynamic that City analysts have long viewed as a near-insurmountable hurdle.
In its rebuff, the eBay board cited “uncertainty” over how the deal would be financed, alongside concerns about “the impact of your proposal on eBay’s long-term growth and profitability”. Directors also pointed to “operational risks, and leadership structure of a combined entity”, as well as questions over “GameStop’s governance”, a pointed reference, observers will note, to a company whose share price has historically been driven as much by social media sentiment as by retail fundamentals.
GameStop had attempted to bolster the credibility of its overture with a commitment letter from TD Securities for roughly $20bn of debt financing. Yet that prospective debt pile is precisely what gave eBay’s board, and a chorus of independent analysts, pause for thought. Sucharita Kodali, retail analyst at Forrester, told Business Matters the proposition was hardly “a terribly good offer”, warning that it would saddle the auction giant with GameStop’s borrowings at a moment when eBay is finally finding its feet again.
That recovery is no idle boast. Despite the well-documented competitive squeeze from Amazon, Etsy and, more recently, the Chinese disruptor Temu, eBay posted net profits of $418.4m in 2025, more than treble the $131.3m delivered the year before, even as sales softened. The board insists its turnaround strategy is bearing fruit and is in no mood to surrender the upside to an opportunistic suitor.
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