eBay was firm and not polite in rejecting GameStop’s unwanted advances after the smaller company made an unsolicited, non-binding proposal to acquire 100% of eBay. In a letter on May 12, 2026, eBay Chairperson of the Board Paul Pressler told GameStop’s Ryan Cohen that his proposal was “neither credible nor attractive.”
Pressler has experience in retail – he was CEO of retail chain The Gap (he was ousted in 2007, per NBC News). He also has experience with activist investors. He joined the eBay Board of Directors in 2015, just 2 months after eBay split with PayPal due to pressure from activist investor Carl Icahn. He was promoted to chair in 2020 after eBay was again targeted by activist investors in 2019 – this time Elliott Management and Starboard Value.
GameStop’s Cohen said on May 13 he was prepared to bring his proposal directly to eBay shareholders and pointed to his experience founding Chewy in 2011 and selling it to PetSmart in 2017 for $3.35 billion. He said he wants eBay to be a much, much larger business, stating that ecommerce was in his wheelhouse and that “there’s no asset in my view that has as much potential as eBay.”
In Wednesday’s interview, he said in reference to eBay’s performance: “spending $2.5 billion dollars a year on sales and marketing and basically not growing active users is lighting money on fire.”
You can watch the GameStop Ryan Cohen interview in the following YouTube video (eBay filed a transcript of the interview available on the SEC.gov website):
