Facebook's share price fell as much as 5% in after-hours trading as the company announced a deal to buy chat application WhatsApp for some $19bn.
The group agreed to pay a total of $19bn (£11.4bn) in cash and stock for the transaction in its single largest acquisition. Of this, $4bn is in cash and $12bn in stock, while WhatsApp will also be granted an additional $3bn in restricted stock units. The scale of the transaction dwarfs the $1bn Facebook paid for photo-sharing app Instagram last year, and was met with shock by some analysts. As a result, Facebook's shares fell from a closing price of $68.06 to $64.70 in after-hours trading on the NASDAQ, according to Reuters, but later recovered to $66.24 - a drop of 2.7%. Facebo...
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