No they didn't.<p>It would have been unethical to be the boss of the company that offer new shares, got them bought on a market, but also unblocking all the short sellers in the process.<p>The consequence would be shorters would be happy, the price would drop, the people who bought into the hype would lose, and the gamestop boss would look like the guy who helped the hedge funds and stole from the common people.
Would the SEC have even allowed them to issue shares? Hertz tried to issue new shares when their stock price was irrationally bid up but was blocked by the SEC. Its a little bit different because Hertz was going bankrupt but otherwise the situations are very similar.
I think selling stock with proper disclosures to the people who wanted it should have been achievable.<p>This was in fact the biggest bull case I could think of: that by getting maybe $1B on the balance sheet they would be well capitalized to take on projects to revamp themselves.
A practical win-win-win outcome might've been for the GameStop board to issue expensive shares to institutional short coverers and then to declare a one-time special dividend-- not quite $300/share, but something that'd appear to serve "the interests of the shareholders".<p>(Years later, there'd be scholarly works about how the GameStop Maneuver differs from a Ponzi Scheme.)
I am ignorant on finance. But if GameStop had considered to offer new shares, wouldn’t some investment bank have to agree to buy them on an exorbitant price, or could they just sell them on open market?