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GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

bbc.co.uk

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Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#141
post #126
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once. Followed by a tank in price and descent into chaos.

You can sell the stock. This isn't complicated.

Neither is ignoring the offer and continuing to hold, if you’ve already been in for two, five, ten, twenty or more years like some have been.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#142
post #7

GameStop doesn't have (even close to) $55.5B. Their offer from the letter is literally impossible: > Our offer is $125.00 per share, comprising 50% cash and 50% GameStop common stock Even if you magically included all existing GameStop stock in the offer, it still would not comprise 50% of $55.5B. EDIT: looks like it's not impossible and I misunderstood. It's a proposed change of leadership with a $25B injection of c…

Isn’t that just a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout ?

No, unless any control transaction using any leverage counts.

A third of the deal is financed with debt. A fifth is financed with cash. The bulk—fifty percent—is being financed with equity. An LBO would see debt and a thin tranche of cash finance the bulk of the acquisition.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#143
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving money around and pretending that there is more of it.

You mean leverage/borrowing? Pretty time tested mechanism of risk taking in free markets.

Moving money from one pile to another so that you can skim a little off the top is imaginary work and is slowly destroying the west

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, their shops arnt sized to do much more than UPS style package movement. I dont see it as a good value, but it's the only thing I see as a synergy. Otherwise it's just more garbage capitalism.

> garbage capitalism. How is this defined?

A few things come to mind:

- SPAC IPOs that dodge standard disclosure requirements and worsen information asymmetry. See WeWork.

- Board positions filled with CEO loyalists instead of independent directors. See OpenAI firing Altman before Microsoft reinstated him.

- Management taking seemingly arbitrary decisions that turn out to be directly linked to their own compensation. SpaceX ordering a bunch of Teslas, or merging with a distressed asset (xAI). See above point on loyalist boards.

- The very concept of leveraged buyouts where financiers borrow money to buy a company, then put the burden on repayment on the company AND pay themselves hefty management fees. This inevitably leads to layoffs and a rapid decline in product/service quality while the company is scrapped for parts.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#145
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example from quite some time ago: Avast buying AVG. The value of AVG was around twice that of Avast.

AOL/TimeWarner, Kmart/Sears… lots of prominent examples.

Interesting how none of these are around anymore

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#146
post #39

ebay is still "old internet", and genuinely useful and well built. enshittification is incoming...

Have you used eBay in the last few years? It's awful for sellers and awful for buyers. This is coming from somebody who buys on eBay twice a month on average.

It’s still way better than Facebook marketplace. At least eBay mostly solved the scam issue. Zuckerberg seems to desire fraud on his platforms.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#147
post #83
post #2

Important background: https://investor.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-details/202... CEO gets paid "only if GameStop achieves a market capitalization of $20 billion." Buying a $55bn company would certainly achieve that quickly. I'm not sure how they'd manage that (buy with what? Memes?), other than the should-be-illegal process of putting debt on the acquired company's balance sheet.

Cohen is already rich rich, his GameStop compensation doesn’t really matter much. The eBay acquisition could be a strategy to juice his compensation but I think it is much more likely he does believe that he can achieve his stated aims, which will financially benefit him much more in the long term.

I'm not sure the fact that somebody is already rich rich would make them less likely to perform ethically dubious practices to juice their own compensation. In fact I'd say the opposite is more likely.

Re: GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay

#149
post #13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have your ever heard of debt? They have a 20B line secured from TD.

Yes, that goes into the '50% cash' part of the offer. With a 20B credit line and 7.5B cash from their own coffers (which they claim to have, so let's believe them on their word there), you cover the cash portion. The issue is the non-cash portion of the offer. They claim that the remaining 27.5B is covered by GameStop stock. But that's more than double the market cap of GameStop.

I’m sure if eBay wanted to build 1800 brick and mortar stores they could do so for less than twenty seven billion dollars.
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