Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: EBay Won’t Play With GameStop

Games

The problem with GameStop’s bid to buy eBay is that it’s half cash, half stock. GameStop, a company with $9 billion of cash and a stock market capitalization of about $10 billion, wants to pay $28 billion of cash and $28 billion of stock for eBay, a company with a stock market capitalization of about $48 billion. The cash is more or less fine; GameStop’s Canadian bank is “highly confident” that it could raise the money. And the problem with the stock is not that a $10 billion company can’t issue $28 billion of stock: Technically GameStop can’t (it doesn’t ...