Over the past year, there have been some enormous acquisitions. Facebook acquired WhatsApp for a staggering $19 billion, and then a little more than a month later acquired Oculus for $2 billion; Microsoft just acquired Nokia Devices and Services business for $7.2 billion; Google bought Motorola in 2011 for $12.5 billion, Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion. The mergers and acquisitions market is booming these days.
We were just forwarded the below infographic from FinancesOnline. It does a really good job showing some of the major mergers and acquisitions over the past several years. There are some really interesting facts and figures in there. The fact that Google acquired Android for $50 million still blows my mind, every single time I see it. The biggest deal of 2013 was not really much of a deal at all. The Dell/Silverlake deal was just Michel Dell buying the company to make it private. Check it out below, there are tons of interesting facts: