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11 Biggest Business Takeovers

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Everyone knows that business is competitive. Every business is looking for a way to increase sales and continue to survive even through a struggling economy. For some, if you cannot beat the competition, you join them. For others, takeovers are the best way to ensure less competition. Sometimes however these takeovers can cost a lot. By a lot, we mean billions of dollars of wealth changing hands between these companies. So, lets take a look at 4 leading industries to see the most expensive takeovers in recent times.

1. Technology

Technology has a number of notable buyouts. In fact, to get some really expensive ones, all we have to do is look at the current largest companies in the tech world. Facebook for example made news when it purchased Instagram for 1 billion dollars. However, that is nothing compared to when Yahoo bought Broadcast.com in 1997. Coming out to more then 5.7 billion dollars, this represented one of the largest buyouts in tech history. That is, until you look at Silverlake, who in 2013 bought Dell for 24.4 billion dollars.

2. Automotive Industry

The automotive industry is known for its takeovers as car companies are created, merge, or otherwise die out. Though many takeovers hover around the 1 billion dollar mark, there was an older takeover which was incredible in the amount offered. In 1998, Daimler Benz acquired Chrysler forming the company Daimler Chrysler. The total cost of this takeover was 37 billion dollars, a singularly staggering number for the car industry at the time. When considering that more recently, BMW bought Rover for only 800 million in 1994, it is easy to understand how shocking 37 billion dollars is in this industry.

3. Finance

When it comes to the most expensive takeovers of all time, it is hard to out match the financial industry. For example, in 1997 57.5 billion dollars changed hands when National Bank and Bank of America combined. That is nothing however when you consider the world’s largest bank takeover which happened in 2007. There, Abn Amro Holding purchased the Royal Bank of Scotland for a whopping 100 Billions dollars.

4. Entertainment

Though it may be hard to outmatch the financial industry, it is not impossible. For example, when America Online was acquired by Time Warner in 2000, the deal came out to a whopping 186.2 Billion dollars.

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