Facebook Inc. (FB), the world’s largest social network, agreed to purchase mobile-messaging start-up WhatsApp Inc. for as much as $19 billion in cash and stock, the biggest Internet acquisition in more than a decade.
The accord includes $12 billion in stock, $4 billion in cash and $3 billion in restricted shares, Facebook said yesterday in a statement.
It’s the largest Internet deal since Time Warner’s $124 billion merger
with AOL in 2001, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. WhatsApp has
more than 450 million members, with 1 million users being added daily.
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg,
who bought photo-sharing service Instagram for about $700 million in
2012, has been adding applications such as messaging and news to court
smartphone and tablet users. WhatsApp, which would be the company’s
biggest acquisition, competes with apps from Twitter (TWTR) Inc., Kik Interactive Inc. and Snapchat Inc., the photo-message startup that rebuffed a $3 billion Facebook bid last year.
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