My name is Lauren Thomas, and I am a deals and activism reporter here at the Wall Street Journal.

And Lauren, we're talking to you because there was a proposed merger and acquisition,

proposed deal that caught a lot of people's eyes recently. Can you tell us what that is?

Yes. Big headline number for sure. GameStop officially submitted a proposal, a $56 billion proposal

to acquire eBay. GameStop, which is worth about $11 billion, was offering to buy a company four times that size, eBay, the Commerce Giant.

What did you think when you heard that?

Yeah, I mean, probably like everyone else was scratching my head a little bit.

You don't often see these smaller companies coming out and trying to buy much larger businesses.

So that in and of itself, I think, provides some shock value.

So Lauren called the man behind this audacious plan, Ryan Cohen, the CEO of GameStop.

Walk through, like, what ultimately led you to eBay?

I think that eBay under my watch, it really comes down to like scale. Yeah.

Being able to do something big. Right. And I think eBay, like, there's nobody who is more qualified based on my experience to run the eBay business.

I could turn that business into something worth significantly more than what eBay is today.

Yeah.

And I can grow it and I can make it a lot more money in a very short period of time.

And it could be like a legit competitor to Amazon.

For Lauren, the deal raises a big question.

As an M&A reporter, anytime you see a deal, I'm always asking myself,

well, how are they going to pull this off, particularly in terms of financing?

How are they going to pay for it?

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

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