eBay needs Ozempic, apparently.

So says Ryan Cohen, anyway. The GameStop CEO has spent the past 24 hours doubling down on the marketplace giant after eBay's board flatly rejected his unsolicited $56 billion takeover bid, branding the deal "neither credible nor attractive" in a blunt response letter made public on Tuesday.

In a podcast preview clip aired Wednesday, Cohen reckoned eBay "needs to be on like Ozempic" and compared the company to a business about to suffer a heart attack from being extremely overweight. Subtle, this is not.

The rejection letter itself, signed by eBay chairman Paul Pressler, reads like a polite demolition job. Pressler lists six factors behind the board's decision: eBay's standalone prospects, the financing uncertainty around Cohen's proposal, the deal's impact on eBay's long-term growth, the leverage and operational risks of a combined entity, the proposed leadership structure, and questions about GameStop's governance and executive incentives. In short, the board sees no benefit to handing the company over to a firm a fifth its size.

Pressler praised eBay's current management under CEO Jamie Iannone, calling the business strong and resilient. Cohen, predictably, was not moved.

The financing problem nobody wanted to discuss

Here's the awkward bit. GameStop, valued at around $10.4 billion, offered to buy eBay for $125 per share, half cash and half stock, valuing the marketplace giant at roughly four times GameStop's own size. The cash portion alone leans on GameStop's $9.4 billion cash pile plus a $20 billion debt commitment from TD Securities, leaving a sizeable funding gap of around $16 billion.

eBay's filing did something rather pointed. The company attached the TD Securities financing letter to its 8-K disclosure, noting GameStop had left the document out of its own filings. The letter, as eBay was happy to highlight, is non-binding and assumes the combined entity holds an investment-grade credit rating from at least two of the top three agencies. Moody's has already warned the proposed merger would be "credit-negative" for eBay.

Cohen's appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box did him no favours either. When Andrew Ross Sorkin pressed him on the maths, Cohen waved the question away, telling viewers the details were on GameStop's website. He repeated the line several times. The clip ricocheted around X all week.

He's also been busy posting personal items for sale on eBay with hand-signed "Letter to eBay" notes, claiming he's "selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay." Baseball cards, socks, the works. A publicity stunt, dressed up as a thank-you.

Where the bid goes from here

The big question is whether Cohen escalates the situation into a full hostile takeover. He's signalled willingness to put the offer directly in front of eBay shareholders, possibly through a special meeting, if the board refuses to engage.

To the Financial Times, he was characteristically diplomatic. Per a filing reproducing the interview, Cohen said: "I'm not going away. I'm a pain in the ass."

Markets, for their part, have voted with their wallets. GameStop shares dropped around 4% after the rejection news broke, erasing the gains the stock had built up since Cohen formally submitted the offer on 3 May. eBay slipped about 1%, hardly a catastrophe. Big Short investor Michael Burry sold his entire GameStop position the day after the bid surfaced, warning his Substack followers, "Never confuse debt for creativity."

For Cohen, who stands to earn up to $35 billion in stock if GameStop hits a $100 billion market cap, the eBay obsession was supposed to be the big leap. Earlier this year, he told the Wall Street Journal he wanted a deal "ultimately either going to be genius or totally, totally foolish." Pressler and the eBay board have offered an early verdict on which of those camps this falls into.

The Wall Street Journal has reported Cohen might lean on Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds to plug the funding gap, though Cohen himself has not publicly confirmed where the missing $16 billion would come from. Without a clearer answer, a proxy fight or hostile bid faces an uphill slog. Cohen's "pain in the ass" threat works as a soundbite. Whether shareholders see a credible buyer behind the bravado is a different question entirely.