Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Ryan Cohen Wants to Work at eBay

GameStop

The simple model of GameStop Corp.’s proposal to acquire eBay Inc. is:

• Ryan Cohen, the chief executive officer of GameStop, thinks he should be the CEO of eBay.
• That is not a job that you can apply for by filling out an application on the website. For one thing, eBay is a $50 billion public company, and public companies rarely hire new CEOs through cold outreach. For another thing, eBay has a CEO already and was not, prior to Cohen’s outreach, looking to replace him.
• If you are an ambitious and energetic person, and you want your dream job, but ...