Facebook announced it is to pay $4bn in cash with
a further $12bn coming in stock. An additional $3bn in restricted stock will be
granted to Whatsapp’s founders and employees over four years.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said
in a statement as the purchase was announced: "Whatsapp is on a path to
connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all
incredibly valuable.
Part of
WhatsApp’s appeal to Facebook is its huge volume of messages with more than 450
million people using it each month – 70 per cent of them active on any given
day – and the number of new registered users rising by a million a day.
Mr Koum
said: “WhatsApp's extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by
the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide. We're
excited and honoured to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring
our product to more people around the world.”
So far this is the company’s largest
acquisition and bigger than any acquisition by Google, Microsoft or Apple have ever done.
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