In June, the board of Grapevine-based GameStop terminated CEO Matthew Furlong without cause and elected the company’s top shareholder, board chair Ryan Cohen—a billionaire activist investor and founder of Chewy.com—as the company’s executive chairman. Today, GameStop released a brief statement naming Cohen as the company’s new president, CEO, and chairman.
Here’s the statement in its entirety: “GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) (“GameStop” or the “Company”) today disclosed that its Board of Directors has elected Ryan Cohen as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Mr. Cohen will not receive compensation for serving as the Company’s President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman.”
As Dallas Innovates noted in June, GameStop has churned through five CEOs in the last five years. That tumultuous era included a major stock dive and stunning stock rally, a pandemic, a revolt by small-time Reddit WallStreetBets “bro” investors against hedge funds that were shorting GameStop stock, and finally the recent September 15 release of “Dumb Money,” a movie about the GameStop “short squeeze” saga directed by Craig Gillespie, starring Paul Dano, Shailene Woodley, Seth Rogen, and America Ferrera, and Paul DeHaan.
The GameStop logo displayed over wallstreetbets subreddit webpage in February 2021. [Image: dennizn/Shutterstock]
But behind all that pop culture and Wall Street drama (and at times, comedy), there’s actually a company headquartered in North Texas. GameStop is a global, multichannel video game, consumer electronics, and collectibles retailer. As of August 23, there were 2,960 GameStop stores in the U.S. alone, 301 of them in Texas, according to data company ScrapeHero.
Cohen’s RC Ventures is GamesStop’s biggest investor, the Associated Press reports, with an approximately 12% stake in the company. GameStop raised over $1 billion in a stock sale in June 2021, after a previous stock offering raised $551 million, the AP added.
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R E A D N E X T
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The revolving door of GameStop CEOs continued June 5, when the video game retailer’s board terminated chief executive Matthew Furlong without cause and elected board chair Ryan Cohen, its top shareholder, as executive chairman. Cohen will oversee management, assume responsibility for capital allocation, and evaluate potential investments and acquisitions for the Grapevine-based company, which has churned through five CEOs in the last five years. In a regulatory filing, GameStop said, “We believe the combination of these efforts to stabilize and optimize our core business and achieve sustained profitability while also focusing on capital allocation under Mr. Cohen’s leadership will further…
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