TD
Toronto Dominion Bank
stock NYSE

\-Is RC using GME as leverage to buy ebay or is it coming out of his own business account?
* People will troll the reality is we dont know. We pay 27B~ Cash, 7B we have 20B we loan from TD Bank. The other half is a mystery as of now.
\-If hypothetically it goes down on monday does gme rise or ebay?
* Ebay ticker ceases to exist. GME absorbs all of it. Market Cap goes up. Price itself depends on the second part above that we dont know
\-Will it end up being two separate tickers or will they merge?
* One. GME
\-If they merge, what happens to warrants?
* probably no change, but i would have to read to confirm
\-If they merge what happens to both tickers?
* GME stays. EBAY gets delisted
\-If it doesn't go through, what then?
Likely GME sells its EBAY calls and makes
* ~200M in profit

I remember the year he put on a *single* trade... and it lost money. Don't think I've heard of TD Sequential since.

I don’t even know how they didn’t understand the math.
Half cash, half stock.
Ebay shareholders keep their stock, it changes tickers, and they receive $62.50 per share.
GME has 20 billion dollars from TD Bank and 9 billion in cash on hand. That’s more than enough to cover it.

Can having Bi polar be considered a preexisting injury for trip cancellation insurance with TD infinite and Wealthsimple card

Zero communication, it's unfathomable that a bank in Canada can get away with this. 71 calender days from order date.  I walked into a TD and asked what they can do. They literally brushed me off saying to keep waiting. I asked what if it's another 2-3 months and they said it could be. Awesome. No returns, no refunds but they have my money, I don't have any PM from them.  

The main points are basically:
1. GameStop is attempting to buy a company almost five times its size ($56B bid vs. $12b market cap). To fund the "stock" half of the deal, they would need to issue over a billion new shares, but their corporate charter only authorizes 1 billion total, and nearly half are already in use. They are literally trying to pay with currency they aren't yet legally allowed to create.
2. The cash portion relies on a "highly confident”letter from TD Bank, which is non-binding rather than a guaranteed loan. Even if they got the $20B, GameStop's current earnings can't support the interest; the plan relies on using eBay's own cash flow to pay for its own hostile takeover, a move institutional investors would probably find reckless.
3. The strategy hinges on using closing GameStop retail stores as "authentication hubs" for luxury goods. Around 400 of the 1,600 stores are currently marked for closure, and the staff aren’t trained to verify all types of collectibles. Critics, including Michael Burry (who just sold his entire stake), see this not as a serious business move, but as "empire building" designed to artificially inflate GameStop's market cap so Ryan Cohen can hit his $35b bonus targets.
4. Trolling and being scant on details in interviews about the proposed deal may play well with existing retailer investors, but it’s not going to win over institutional shareholders who have to decide whether to vote on this deal.

I am not an ape, just someone asking questions.
I see everywhere how this deal is utterly idiotic.
If it is so ridiculous, why is it being proposed? If the math doesnt work what is missing or could be missing? If he proposes a 60/40 split and its not even close to reality, doesnt that just hurt the deal altogether? Is it even math related? Cohen has stated this has never been done before and that theyre trying something sort of, out of the box - now i have 0 idea what that means or could entail whatsoever.
Im no expert, but want to understand more.

I plugged your post into chatgpt, it verified your information as correct. I then asked the Question "so how is this deal possible in a 60/40 split in Ownership? What is cohen really proposing?"
And it replied something very lengthy that i dont believe will all fit here... but this is the final tidbit:
A 60/40 ownership split is only possible if the deal is being valued off **GameStop’s market capitalization as acquisition currency**, rather than off underlying enterprise value economics.
That’s the crucial distinction.
If GameStop stock is treated as “real” acquisition currency at an $11B equity valuation, then in a stock-for-stock merger you can mechanically engineer many ownership splits.
But whether the market *continues* valuing GameStop that way after announcement is the real question.
Your framework is fundamentally:
>
The bullish framework is:
>
Those are two completely different valuation systems.
That’s why:
* skeptics focus on EV math and dilution,
* while enthusiasts focus on strategic narrative and future optionality.
And in mergers funded largely with stock, narrative can temporarily matter as much as fundamentals — at least until the combined company must actually perform.

After reading the entire portion it has given me, it makes general sense in what's happening.
Hes proposing stategic value and after watching his Ebay interview a few hours ago with Justin Sells, it provides more insight on that thought too.
I still dont know if there are any other portions to the deal though...but... hes trying to convince people, wants to convince people, that ebay is going to become this massive full scale success instead of this stagnant company... Spread how much success hes had in his past with chewy and gamestop, shows he takes no pay, show what ebay is currently doing(or not doing), and capitalize on that change in sentiment towards it. Hes playing the social game. Thats why the math doesnt add up, because hes not using the math to do it, hes using the potential value of the joined company... Would TD loan him 20b on that type of deal? Why would Td loan that kind of money if it was an absolutely ridiculous idea?
has this deal really happened before? I asked chatgpt this question afterwards and it provided me a list of companies where this exact type of deal has been successful before. So it is possible, but it outlines:
"...success of these transactions usually relies on:
1. sustained premium valuation,
2. future synergies,
3. strategic transformation,
4. narrative momentum,
5. access to cheap capital."

I have a lot more to research and understand.

What are your thoughts on that kind of a deal and the sort of anti-math take?

I can explain the best I understand it but more wrinkle brains could do better.
TD Securities asked and received approval on May 6th that starting May 11th, they are sponsoring clients to finance deals and they’ll act as the clearinghouse.
The timing is insane. It’s TD preparing the plumbing to bring in bigger partners/ sovereign wealth funds, etc.

He did speak like he owned it … but we know that can’t be true because of filing regulations.
But what if TD has exposure as a hedge? Or RC knows the GME price is going to explode soon and we won’t need any dilution? He seems so confident this is a done deal.
I think by the time the vote comes up for his compensation or issuing more shares, the deals will already be done.

eh, HMAX is questionable; you are up like 15% yOy with another 10-12% paid out. Still well behind the leading three banks if you just bought and hold. TD is up over 70%, RY closing in on 40, even BNS doing better than HMAX.
HMAX is a good stock when banks trade sideways in a range for a long period so Nick can farm the CC premiums without forfeiting shares.

When I transferred to from TD to fidelity it went from 19 to 51 per share on my cost basis. I was pissed but I got over it.

like in one of those last TD interviews, they asked him about powerpacks i think, and he said they were doing really well and i think gave some numbers that i don’t remember… but his take home was inventory issues. The powerpacks sell out, and people are pulling from a shrinking pool faster than they can be added. That’s a good thing as they can address that, and probably why they have added other categories not only to peak others interests, but also give alternatives for when the one they want might not be available. Maybe try something new.
For example, if there was a $25 starters for a chance at a graded blue eyes white dragon from yugioh (i think a chase one would cost about $400, right on par with current chases of starters). id buy. But im always gonna go pokemon first…
Not to mention why we have seen others say that reps from gamestop are now attending card shows and buying out booths, good and bad cards. idk how true that is ive never been… but i’ve seen that in the card community subs.

I really couldn’t say. I have two different accounts and I think they used combined value. Since one was IRA and the other was brokerage, I was not combining them mentally. I may have been over a million at Schwab for several months before I got a notice. (Note I was a TD customer and both these accounts came over from TD, so that may have had an impact as well).
I mostly ignored them once I was contacted. I did end up using them recently though because I just retired. I got a free meeting with their CFP to work through whether I was financially prepared to retire. Thankfully they agreed that I was. And, they handled the rollover of my 401(k), because of course they’d be happy to take over another million.

Good question. Is there a list of incentives by brokers anywhere? I remember years ago switching everything I had to TD and getting something like $5K. Then switching to Fidelity a few years later and getting $7K. I believe one of them was in Amazon gift certificates. Fidelity also used to give Alexa devices for depositing a large amount. I got sent three of them and never used them and also got a 1099 and had to pay taxes on them.

Poor - but again businesses have bad ideas - cash flowing business with a good balance sheet.
I agree - RC and GME make bad decisions.
There’s a lot and there will be more but he is stacking cash.
A real bad case scenario is not if the deal falls through but if EBAY accepts the deal and TD bank doesn’t actually give over the 20Bn.

I had an excellent CFP with TD Ameritrade. She left became my wealth management contractor. I picked a do nothing VP and we met a few times. He goes not get paid extra unless I buy products he recommends and executes for me. To avoid him pushing sales I used the wealth manager to counter his sales pitch. Now my wealth manager retired so I withdrew from wealth management funds handled all by myself.
I asked about perks. He said he could get me baseball tickets but he needed to be with clients at the game. Wife does not like him. I did not ask for free lunch when my old CFP and branch manager also came along and offered me new stocks opportunity. I am at a branch where some clients have easily low 8 figures deposit. My understanding is 1/3 Nvidia workers nearby have that much just from their employer. Either I have to find a more people manager or go to a smaller isolated branch. This office client avg deposit is too intimidating. During X-mas I saw several senior citizens brought a gift to their advisor who seems to be overfed already. These days I don't even get a Xmas card.

"I did not want to be the CEO of GameStop. I want to be the CEO of eBay," Ryan Cohen told Business Insider. GameStop
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen said he will continue doing whatever it takes to buy eBay.
CNBC's skeptical interviewers "misunderstood" his deal math in his now-viral "Squawk Box" appearance, he said.
The activist investor accused eBay's leadership of poor management. "There's a ton of fat that can be cut."
Ryan Cohen says he never wanted to be CEO of GameStop.
Instead, he says he dreams of helming eBay and thinks he has a real shot at achieving that goal, despite critics' claims that the e-commerce giant is beyond his reach.
"I'm going to continue doing whatever I need to do in order to buy the business," the GameStop CEO told Business Insider in a phone interview on Friday. "I'm going to make myself CEO of both."
Ryan Cohen tells us why he's serious about buying eBay — and what he thinks about his viral CNBC interview
Cohen surprised Wall Street earlier this week when he disclosed that GameStop had made an unsolicited bid of about $56 billion for eBay, which has a market value more than three times its size. He raised eyebrows again on Monday when he appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," during which the hosts openly doubted whether the company could afford eBay and responded to his remarks with exhalations and chuckles.
"I'm not sure whether their questions were sincere or not," said Cohen, adding that he laid out a clear explanation of how he would finance a deal for eBay. "I don't know what is so complicated for them to figure it out."
A CNBC spokesperson said the "Squawk Box" interview "speaks for itself."
Cohen, whose "half cash, half stock" mantra describing the financing quickly became a meme, said GameStop has about $9 billion in cash and that TD Bank had expressed confidence in placing roughly $20 billion in debt. Together, he said, would cover the cash portion of the bid. In the wake of his viral CNBC appearance, Cohen offered a more detailed explanation of his math, including on TBPN.
"What we're proposing is for existing shareholders to take half of their investment off the table, and that would be us providing them with $28 billion, which is like a 40% premium from when we started buying the stock," he told TBPN. "And then they would be getting roughly — I mean it depends on ultimately when the transaction closes — but they would be rolling the rest into the combined company of GameStop and eBay."
When speaking with Business Insider, Cohen suggested the stock component would be "earnings per share accretive" for GameStop shareholders because he said he could significantly increase eBay's profitability through cost-cutting, making the combined entities more valuable overall.
A familiar playbook
In publicly criticizing eBay's leadership and arguing he could do a better job, Cohen borrowed from the playbook he used when he took over GameStop in 2021. A key difference, though, is that eBay's business is much healthier today than GameStop's was back then.
Cohen, who built his fortune as the cofounder of online pet-products retailer Chewy, told Business Insider that eBay could be in an even better financial position if it were managed more efficiently.
"There's a ton of fat that can be cut," he said, pointing to what he described as excessive operating expenses at a company that carries no inventory and whose operating income has remained roughly flat for a decade despite broader e-commerce growth.
EBay's operating income was $2.28 billion for 2025 compared to $2.2 billion for 2015. The company completed its PayPal spinoff in 2015 and has offloaded other assets in the last decade, including selling StubHub. The company's EBITDA margin, a profitability ratio measuring operational efficiency, was 24% for 2025.
Cohen also took aim at eBay's executives and directors. He alleged they had sold "hundreds of millions of dollars of stock" without buying shares themselves.
"They're not owners in the business. They're just milking it," he said. "It's simply a paycheck for them."
Like other executives of publicly traded companies, Ebay's leadership receives shares and stock options as part of their compensation packages. A source familiar with the matter said company insiders currently own over $150 million in shares.
Further, Cohen criticized eBay's corporate culture, alleging that the company had become too comfortable and undisciplined under its current leadership.
EBay has publicly said it is reviewing Cohen's bid.
A frugal 'meme king'
Cohen, who has also pushed for change at Nordstrom and Bed Bath & Beyond, said he wouldn't take a salary if he became CEO of eBay. He doesn't earn one at GameStop, though he has a $35 billion compensation package tied to hitting market cap and profit milestones, which an eBay deal could help unlock. He said he pays his personal assistant out of his own pocket and that whoever GameStop hires for a recently posted private project manager job would be compensated the same way.
"I have not pulled a penny out of GameStop," he said.
Since unveiling his bid for eBay, Cohen has leaned into his message about frugality — and his "meme king" reputation for publicity stunts — by listing personal items for sale on the platform. Those included one for a used pair of socks that drew bids of over $14,000. He said the effort is a sincere part of a broader push to help finance the acquisition.
"I have a lot of spare stuff," he said.
In a brief follow-up call on Friday, Cohen expanded on his aspirations for leading the merged companies.
"I did not want to be the CEO of GameStop. I want to be the CEO of eBay," he said. "I'm passionate about eBay. I believe in eBay's business. I wasn't passionate about GameStop. That's the difference."
Correction, May 9, 2026: An earlier version of this article misstated the year Cohen took over GameStop. This story has also been updated with information about eBay leadership stock holdings and the company's financials.

---
Did the verification on the goodwill DD. Most of it holds up against primary sources. Sharing what's bulletproof so you can use it without getting sniped on facts.
**What's confirmed in primary sources (use freely):**
- SFAS 142 (June 2001) ended goodwill amortization. Before that, APB 17 made companies amortize it over up to 40 years. Source: FASB direct.
- IRC §197 still lets buyers deduct goodwill over 15 years on taxes. So companies tell investors goodwill is permanent and tell the IRS it's depreciating. Same line item, opposite treatment. Cornell LII / IRC.
- The "political concession" angle is backed by Karthik Ramanna's 2008 paper in the Journal of Accounting and Economics (HBS). He documented PAC money from pro-pooling firms to Congresspeople pressuring FASB. This is a real, peer-reviewed finding from a top journal. Cite Ramanna 2008.
- Every headline impairment confirmed from 10-K/8-K filings on EDGAR: AOL Time Warner $54B (Q1 2002), Microsoft/Nokia $7.6B (FY2015), GE $22B (Q3 2018), ConocoPhillips $25.4B (Q4 2008), Kraft Heinz $15.4B (Q4 2018), AT&T $15.5B (Q4 2020).
- $5.6T total US public-company goodwill. 30-40% of S&P 500 equity is goodwill. **89 S&P 500 companies would have negative book value if amortization came back.** 112 already have goodwill exceeding total equity. Sources: Bloomberg Law analysis, CFA Institute 2021 investor survey, Calcbench, Valuation Research Corp.
- "One-third is overpayment" comes from Henning, Lewis & Shaw (2000) in Journal of Accounting Research. They found the residual averages 31% of recognized goodwill. Real academic finding.
- Kroll 2025 Goodwill Impairment Study: $96B impaired across 8,134 companies in 2024. 2020 was $142.5B.
- **The Feb 4, 2026 FASB meeting is the kicker.** No vote. Project kicked back to staff. Chair Richard Jones literally said amortization "makes more sense" but he's "skeptical the board could get that through." Member Cannon: "We worked very hard to come up with a meaningful amortization schedule, and just couldn't get there." This is the regulator on record saying the rule should change but can't. Source: CFO Dive, FASB spokesperson on the record.
**Deal facts, all from EDGAR (Schedule 13D filed May 4, 2026):**
- $125/share, $55.5B, 50/50 cash and stock confirmed.
- 5% economic stake confirmed: 25,000 shares plus put/call pairs on 22,176,000 shares expiring Feb 23, 2028.
- TD Securities $20B highly-confident letter confirmed. Important: a highly-confident letter is **not committed financing**. Even mainstream coverage is calling out the funding gap. Worth knowing rather than getting blindsided.
- Cohen option grant from the 8-K filed Jan 7, 2026: 171,537,327 options at $20.66 strike, nine tranches, first vests at $20B mcap and $2B EBITDA, full vesting at $100B mcap and $10B EBITDA. The $35B headline number is press math, not in the filing.
- Becky Quick interview confirmed across multiple outlets. His "if I don't hit the thresholds, I don't get anything" line is real.
**Where the DD overstates and shorts will pounce if you don't hedge:**
The basket-rebalancing squeeze leg is the weakest part. FTSE RAFI uses book as one of four equally-weighted factors and rebalances **annually**, not on deal close. Russell RAFI doesn't use book at all. Whether custom institutional swap baskets strip goodwill from book is proprietary and not publicly disclosed. Whether GME sits in book-weighted baskets in size is not verifiable from 13Fs (Archegos taught us 13Fs don't catch swaps). The mechanics are plausible but the magnitude is unverifiable.
If you lead with "mechanical squeeze incoming" you're putting weight on the one leg that has zero primary-source backing. If you lead with **"the same accounting regime that quietly funded $5.6T of PE and Big Tech acquisitions for 25 years is now being run in public by RC with a $35B comp package and millions of retail watching,"** that's the version that holds up under scrutiny. The structural critique is the strong claim. The squeeze is the speculative payoff.
Also worth knowing: Chicago Booth research (Huber & McClure) modeled that *restoring* amortization would actually push more M&A toward PE buyers, not less. So the "PE benefits from no amortization" framing isn't as clean as the DD makes it. Doesn't break the thesis but you'll get challenged on it.
**The bullish bottom line that actually survives source-checking:**
The accounting rules are real and documented. The Cohen incentive structure objectively rewards acquisition-driven growth. The deal is exactly as filed. The $5.6T goodwill bubble is a peer-reviewed phenomenon. FASB itself just admitted on the record they can't fix it. The structural play is real.
The squeeze mechanism is a theory worth holding loosely, not a thesis to bet the farm on.
Read the EDGAR filings yourself. NFA.

FYI- This is comment is built purely on conjecture, speculation, raw assumptions and outright guesses. But, the $4 billion debt is still held in cash and is 0% interest raised for this exact purpose . GameStop is still trading in the $25-26 range post stock split (so comparable to $100 a share vs. $4 a share when the whole GME saga started). It really depends on how the deal is structured but it sounds more like a merger than an acquisition. GameStop's debt would come mostly from the TD loan of $20 billion but would be would be mitigated from the new market cap and increase in EPS. The deal is not lucrative when you compare it even to the Paramount (who has a similar market cap) purchase of WB with both companies already holding 40 billion in debt before the merger even takes place. The deal would be 28 billion plus 28 billion in stock. That leaves GameStop with $1 billion net cash flow. Take into consideration Ryan Cohen owns 5% of eBay now - acting as a $3 billion equity rebate from the stock portion. We don't know the stock exchange rate but we do know it would be a 40/60 equity split with eBay shareholders (95% institutionally owned) owning 60% of the new issuance. This process usually triggers a stock recall where all shares from both companies are surrendered then reissued, which is a concern for over leveraged private equity which is assumed to hold 15-54% short positions by even mainstream analyst (look at overstock and Volkswagen). If we assume they reissue the current outstanding stock between both companies of about 990 million that means the new price per share would be roughly $60 a share based on new market cap with the assumption of zero synergies calculated. GameStop would only need it to be $42 to meet the $25 billion equity requirement for the 594,000,000 (60%) shares owed.

Yeah, I never got my cost basis worked out for my first shares from TD Ameritrade transfer to Computershare. Rest I did TDA to Fidelity and were all good.