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outm t1_iziroye wrote

Today, Vodafone is worth about 24£ billion

Interesting how in some years the world has changed so much: tech companies surged (even going some overrated in their worth in the stock listings in my opinion: Tesla, Apple, Google…); meanwhile, others have lost so much worth (telecoms for example)

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uselessartist t1_izivhcx wrote

Notice how many were just before big bubbles bursting.

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RedOblivionLW t1_izixaua wrote

I think TECHNICALLY time Warner still purchased AOL. Even though that was one of the worst business decisions even know to man.

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upwaydown t1_izj0f0z wrote

The Dow/DuPont merger was an odd one. Had to do a case study on it in college, worth the Google search.

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NovaticFlame t1_izj22ag wrote

Replying to RedOblivionLW (#892,752)

I think you got it backwards. AOL purchased Time-Warner, since they were worth more at the time. But AOL exec’s let them think it was the other way around, since AOL was young and inexperienced. AOL leveraged their high market cap due to the bubble to make a deal.

Source is from The Fifth Wave. Great read if you ever have time!

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g_spaitz t1_izj8rxm wrote

It's curious that so many on this list are just around the turn of the millennium. Do we have stricter anti-monopolies laws now or big companies don't buy each other out as often?

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vt2022cam t1_izjf92k wrote

Everyone at AOL laughing all the way to the bank.

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FartingBob t1_izjin6y wrote

Replying to howtochangename1 (#893,304)

They have (and had back then even more) market leading phone services across large parts of Europe, at the time when mobile phones were becoming very common. It's was seen as an absolutely huge growth industry and carriers rather than phone makers were the ones being valued more.

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FrameofMindArtStudio t1_izjiujt wrote

Vodafone royally fucked me over recently so this just makes me even more salty.

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upwaydown t1_izjlt7y wrote

Replying to Jim-N-Tonic (#893,589)

It all happened so quickly and at such a large scale. When merged (Dec 2015), DowDuPont was the largest chemical company in the world by far. They merge to reorganize their assets, secrets, and liabilities with each other while creating a new public stock for a short amount of time. They broke up in March 2017 into 3, more product-concentrated companies. Dow, DuPont, and Corteva were the result and are still industry leaders today. In hindsight it appears DuPont and Dow split up assets and secrets in a tax-efficient/dodging way. Dow seemed to get the better deal in the end imo.

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tonification t1_izjm33n wrote

Interesting how few of the big ones are recent. Have mega mergers gone out of fashion?

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passed_turing_test t1_izjq1j3 wrote

AOL and Time Warner. This will be taught in bad decisions in business schools for a long time. Proof that CEO's "vision" is limited.

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vezkor09 t1_izk54ju wrote

if Verizon buying 45% of Vodaphone makes the list then Berkshire Hathaway buying 5.8% of apple should make the list. Current market value of 132 Billion...

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astaroh t1_izk5bdv wrote

Roughly how much would the business workers who helped broker the deal get for some of these massive M&As? I imagine they work for a commission or tiny percentage of the entire deal

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AnthonyR9 t1_izk6vcv wrote

Holy crap. I work with the company 6th option down (formally known as Suez) We went from 3k end users to ~11k over night. Our IT department (which I am apart of) had a ton of fun that Monday morning.

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TheOutlawStarLord t1_izk9f8j wrote

I always wondered why my Kraft Ketchup started tasting like Heinz back in 2015.

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kogus t1_izkaq2x wrote

Wikipedia says Bank of America bought nations bank, not the other way around

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bradleykent t1_izkbmvs wrote

I found it interesting how many of these large merger acquisitions occurred in 1998-9 and 2015.

Those were big years for mergers apparently.

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reen68 t1_izkcwtb wrote

Just a nitpick but you've used the wrong Astra logo I think. That's the logo of the satellite company.

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ZetaZeta t1_izlby64 wrote

Replying to upwaydown (#893,774)

Good thing they didn't do each other dirty, like Google buying Motorola for $12.5 Billion, pocketed their patent portfolio, then sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.9 Billion. 😂

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ksharpalpha t1_izlrhmm wrote

Replying to ZetaZeta (#896,353)

That was entirely the point of Google buying Motorola. They were always in for their parent portfolio because they were afraid someone like Apple, Microsoft or Samsung (for Tizen)would buy Motorola and weaponize their patents and kill Android.

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Suspicious-Feeling-1 t1_izlry9s wrote

Replying to outm (#892,519)

Honestly Apple & Google have grown into their valuations a lot more than many people realize. Even by pretty traditional metrics (eg P/E ratio) they're barely above average, and that's with them still making pretty giant investments in growth. Agree on Tesla though

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Crazy-Database6635 t1_izlze9j wrote

I'm still in fucking pain serious pain because those fuckers, I'm still just stuck on the typical old same old crap painkillers, I wanted to try something I thought of, a way to hack into a cell and completely disable the pain signal, but they would lose money, they can't have that, so they stole the election

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PinealFever t1_izm4atu wrote

Coming in at second on this list is literally the only good thing about the AOL/Time Warner merge.

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