Business|With eBay Bid, GameStop C.E.O. Baffles His Fans and Wall Street

Ryan Cohen is known as a maverick on Wall Street, admired by some for his operational acumen and savvy financial engineering.

But the rollout this week of his audacious proposal to merge GameStop, the video game retailer he runs, with the much larger eBay has befuddled even some of his biggest fans.

Even after days of poring over financial filings and parsing Mr. Cohen’s statements about the proposed deal, many market watchers still have big questions about the basic mechanics of how the takeover would work.

It started with his dizzying interview on CNBC on Monday in which he appeared flummoxed by fundamental questions — most notably how GameStop, a $12 billion company, would pay to merge with eBay, which is worth $46 billion. Rather than build support, the viral interview — which featured several awkward periods of silence as anchors tried to get the laconic executive to answer their questions — fueled more skepticism about the deal.

In later interviews with other outlets, Mr. Cohen was more forthcoming. He described a deal that sounded like a reverse merger, with significant contributions from eBay shareholders to form a combined company that he would run.

One high-profile investor, Michael Burry, announced that he had sold all his GameStop stock because he was worried about the debt Mr. Cohen was proposing to borrow for the deal.