Some Landmark M&A Deals—And Their Deal Toys (Updated)

The M&A deals commemorated here involved not only individuals like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Robert Iger…but also a Ukrainian immigrant and a former Yahoo engineer.

They involved firms like Blackstone, Moelis, Evercore, and Goldman Sachs…but also others such as Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch.

As with our other posts on historic deal toys–including those marking IPO’s, as well as those in the areas of tech and real estate—-this gallery represents an array of banks, industries, materials, and locales.

This 17.2 billion euro ($18.7 billion) deal is the largest European private equity transaction in a decade.

Two statistics regarding the elevator industry center on the figure of 60%. Four companies, Otis, Kone Oyj, Schindler, and Thyssenkrupp, comprise more than 60% of the elevator market; and more than 60% of new elevator installations take place in China.

Acquisitions of minority stakes—even at $5.7 billion—usually don’t make for landmark transactions. But this deal allied Facebook with the largest telecom provider in India, which is already its largest market by user count.

CEO Robert Iger pitched the Pixar deal to Disney’s board on October 2, 2005—his second day on the job.

Among other things, the $7.4 billion deal made Steve Jobs a Disney director, and its largest individual stockholder.

Announced in October 2015, this $67 billion deal then took almost 11 months to close.

Prior to joining forces in this $27 billion deal, Warren Buffett and 3G CEO Jorge Paulo Lemann got to know each other as board members of Gillette.

WhatsApp’s founders, Ukrainian immigrant Jan Koum and ex-Yahoo engineer Brian Acton, made $6.8 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively, on this $22 billion acquisition.

The total value of this 2000 deal was $11 billion in cash, stock, and debt.