With Facebook‘s deal for WhatsApp, the volume of technology mergers and acquisitions in the United States has risen to its highest level since the dot-com boom, Thomson Reuters data shows.
Putting the WhatsApp acquisition at $19 billion â€" when $3 billion in restricted stock units that will vest over the next four years are included â€" it is the fifth-largest technology deal of all time, according to Thomson Reuters. (Its list doesn’t include telecommunications or media mergers like the Vodafone-Mannesmann and America Online-Time Warner deals.)
The most recent of the top four tech deals is Hewlett-Packard‘s takeover of Compaq Computer in 2001 for $23.5 billion.
The total dollar volume of technology deal-making in the United States is up 39 percent, to $42.4 billion. so far this year, compared with the same period a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters. That’s the highest since the watershed year of 2000, when $79.6 billion worth of tech deals had been announced by this date.
