icons Facebook and WhatsApp in a ‘smartphone’. / Chris Ratcliffe (Bloomberg)
Facebook did not know how to tackle the growth of a messaging application without getting too had an unknown growth. Neither knew how to conquer a space in which WeChat Line Japanese and Chinese began to gain relevance. The solution to this lack, announced in early February, resulted to hit book. Initially the cost was 13,700 million euros. A number that has grown in this type and will have to add 2,300 million euros (3,000 million) due to the revaluation of Facebook shares, which have risen 42% since then.
The network social created by Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed this decision in a document given the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States (SEC) at the end of the session. The sale has closed 177 760 669 Facebook shares and 4,590 million in cash plus the delivery of 45,941,775 shares of “restricted” employees WhatsApp.
WhatsApp, founded in 2009, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, former employees of Yahoo !, has over 600 million monthly active users. The transaction received the approval of the authorities of the USA in April. Last Friday the European Commission (EC) gave its approval to consider that there is a monopoly case, as citizens have alternative IM. “The Commission concluded that American Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are not close competitors and that consumers continue to have a wide variety of alternative communications applications after the transaction” is highlighted in the statement.
Although the deal was not closed, if employees Green application has changed their lives. Just are fifty and almost all have shares as payment, a way to attract them when the application was nothing more than a promise without much solvency. Later this year will exceed one hundred.
In the closed treatment of the controversial Jan Koum, its creator, and Zuckerberg detailed WhatsApp maintain its own technical team. Marketing operations will be from Menlo Park, headquarters of Facebook, a few kilometers. The question is to know how the product will be the focus in the future and whether they will be able to maintain the alternate image that have evolved so far. Koum will integrate within the board of Facebook. The history of the developer of Ukrainian origin perfectly captures the American dream. He emigrated with his parents, both now dead. He did not finish college and for years lived the help of coupons to buy food.
They have gone from being in a room with little decoration, just some graffiti on the walls, inside the headquarters a company of covers for iPads and computers, to have a four-storey building with the usual amenities in downtown Mountain View, just minutes from the train stop walking Silicon Valley.
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