Where does WhatsApp acquisition rank in history of tech deals? – latimes.com

There are serious errors in this article. SDL (Spectra Diode Labs) was a Silicon Valley company and not based out of Zurich. They had offices and a semiconductor fab on 1st st in san jose. No idea where the author got Zurich from. Anyway, SDL's acquisition by JDSU was $40B and as far as I know still remains the largest acqusition of a SV company. Interstingly the top 2 execs got cash payouts >$40M as part of the acquisition while JDSU was laying off engineers as the bubble burst in late 2000.