[aresant]

The context this comment misses is Gamestop's secret weapon is their CEO Ryan Cohen who has been sitting around the hoop trying to figure out how to leverage Gamestop's fundraising capabilities to do something big

Couple of highlights on Ryan

- Built and sold Chewy from a startup to the largest ecomm acq of all time - Became #1 individual shareholder of Apple early on - Bought a 10% share of Gamespot in 2020 becoming largest personal shareholder - Took over as CEO after being a proactive board member, works for no salary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Cohen

[this_user]

You should also mention that Cohen never managed to turn Chewy into a profitable business before selling it off.

Similarly, his strategic initiatives at Gamestop have all been failure (e-commerce push, NFTs, digital games platform, crypto investments, ...). The only thing that has worked is aggressively cutting costs, mainly by shutting down stores, which was a plan that had already been proposed by BCG before Cohen came onboard.

Basically, he has done nothing except for taking credit for a plan that was already in motion and repeatedly diluting shareholders to raise funds that have been sitting in T-Bills ever since. There is no indication whatsoever that this guy is some kind of business genius who would be able to run Ebay better than the current management - quite the opposite actually.

[tombert]

I find it weird that people idolize businesspeople who basically just engage in ponzinomics.

They create businesses that don't make any money, often don't have any plans to ever make money, with the hope that they either get bought out by a BigCo or become public so that it becomes the index funds' problem.

It feels like this has been going on for about as long as Silicon Valley has been a thing, so maybe it actually is sustainable, but it sure feels like we are building our economy on a house of cards.

[_boffin_]

Wasn’t there something where his comp package mandated 50b in market cap?

Ahh. 100b https://investor.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-details/202...

[rtkwe]

He gets money every $10B of market cap anyways so even if it never grows this acquisition makes RC money.

[bayarearefugee]

> works for no salary

Working for no salary is almost never charitable and is almost always just part of a larger tax avoidance scheme.

[tombert]

Yeah I've never thought that that was the win that people seem to think it is. When you're that high up in the company, you have so much stock that you can pretty easily get loans against for however much you need, and write off the interest in the process.

[valleyer]

What U.S. tax code provision allows an individual to write off (non-primary-mortgage) loan interest?

[tombert]

Can't you write off capital losses? I've been able to deduct margin interest from my capital gains.

[valleyer]

Margin interest is tax-deductible, but only when you're using the loan to buy more securities. So, in context, a CEO who "works for no salary" and just takes out loans secured by their stock holdings to fund their lifestyle does not get to write off that interest.

Not to say the "no salary" thing isn't silly anyway, of course.

[rtkwe]

They have to trot it out because otherwise there's not much else to pimp about Cohen as CEO and this attempted deal seems much more oriented to juice the total market value of GME to more easily meet the criteria for his recent pay package rather than a great idea for either company on it's own.

[wordpad]

Doesn't matter as long as incentives are aligned. As a major stockholder and active advocate, he is already vested in success.

[tombert]

I'm not sure that the incentives actually are aligned. It seems like the incentives are to think short term and do sketchy shit to pump the stock.

[wordpad]

>It seems like the incentives are to think short term and do sketchy shit to pump the stock.

Its a meme stock, that's what stockholders actually want.

[tombert]

I'm arguing it's not "success". I don't believe that a meme stock is a truly long-term business.

[wordpad]

>I'm arguing it's not "success". I don't believe that a meme stock is a truly long-term business.

Duh. Crypto is the peak meme investment. Literally worthless, yet the market size is in trillions now, with even pension funds buying into it.

It doesn't follow any fundamentals, but as the meme markets defacto exist, there needs to be some models of valuing these investments other than fundamentals.

[matthewdgreen]

I wish we would normalize people just running a business well and taking a damned salary.

[love2read]

You want to normalize low ambitions?

[Bjartr]

While successfully running a business in a sustainable way may not be the peak of ambition, calling it low ambition is toxic in the other direction.

[triceratops]

Doing a good job without it benefiting your personally.

[GuinansEyebrows]

unironically, yes. go get good at tetris if you need a high score for personal validation.

[jader201]

"Running a business well" is now "low ambitions"?

[turtlesdown11]

very impressive spokesman for the business and transaction

> it's on our website https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmj2PaxX24E