Acquisitions

Today I wanted to talk about two acquisitions.

• On one side, Facebook and Whatsapp. $19 billion. There are many different opinions. Craziness. Logic. IMO the money paid is crazy, but the deal has a lot of logic for Facebook. Because for many people around me (including teens), Whatsapp is THE social network. They(we?) share things like images and videos, status. We use it almost everyday. Food for thought: when was the last time you got to know anything reading it on Facebook?

• On the other side, Simple and BBVA. Simple wants to be the new bank. And it has been bought by a well known international Spanish bank. $117 million. I worked for one of the banks that end up being BBVA in 1999. Very interesting project by the way (Data Warehouse). At that time, BBVA launched a pure online bank called Uno-e. It was supposed to be the way to go. Very appealing technology. Santander, another international Spanish bank bought something called Patagon. 15 years later Patagon does not exist (it is called Openbank). But both Openbank and Uno-e languish in the Spanish local market. I would be surprised if Simple does not follow a similar path.

I know there will be lots of different perspectives. But don’t think about the amount. Think about the whole picture.