After the green light received from the antitrust authorities of the European Union, Facebook has announced that it has closed the deal with WhatsApp, the mobile messaging application, for an amount of $19 billion. According to Forbes, the deal was first discussed by WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum and Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg at the latter’s house, over a bottle of scotch.
Until the final approvals were received, WhatsApp has continued to run as an independent enterprise, but now, when the deal is finalized, it will slowly begin integrating into Facebook. The blue giant will slowly begin offering legal and administrative support to its latest acquisition, and will probably find new ways to monetize it later on.
Facebook has first announced the intention to acquire WhatsApp in February 2013. The amount disclosed by Facebook was jaw-dropping: $19 billion. The two founders of the mobile messaging company, Ukraine-born Koum and former Yahoo engineer Brian Acton, have become billionaires overnight. Although a large share of the company was owned by investors, they will still walk away with $6.8 billion (Koum) and $3.5 billion (Acton). Facebook will award $4.59 billion in cash to WhatsApp’s shareholders, plus a number of 177.8 million of its Class A common stock, along with 45.9 million shares (restricted stock units) to WhatsApp employees. Considering the current share value of Facebook, the deal is evaluated to $21.8 billion at this moment.
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WhatsApp is a cross-platform instant messaging service for smartphones and selected feature phones founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both of them former employees of Yahoo. As of September 2014, WhatsApp has over 600 million users worldwide – this makes it the most widely used mobile messaging app in the world. WhatsApp is currently officially available for Apple’s iPhone OS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian and Windows Phone, and it has unofficial versions supporting WebOS, Firefox OS and MeeGo.