Amazon just spent billions of dollars to buy America's favorite organic supermarket chain, Whole Foods. Another corporate giant, Walmart, also added a new addition by purchasing Bonobos. Finally, everyone's favorite multinational technology company Google is facing a massive fine from the European Commission.
Amazon makes its biggest purchase to date
Amazon announced today that it is buying Whole Foods for a whooping $13.4 billion dollars. This price tag even includes all debts that Whole Foods has. They are going to pay $42 per share in cash for Whole Foods, which is a 27% premium on the company's closing price.
This is now the internet retailer's largest deal ever, as Amazon is preparing to make its biggest incursion into the brick-and-mortar retail sector of the economy.
Amazon will now control 465 Whole Foods stores across North America and the United Kingdom. This will allow the company to boost their delivery capacity and compete directly with U.S. supermarket chains. The move has already sent ripple effects through the supermarket industry as competitors will now have to face Amazon's gigantic buying power and ability to sell products at a lower price. It will be interesting to see what happens moving forward.
Walmart acquires Bonobos
On the same day that Amazon made their big acquisition, their main competition Walmart also announced that they were buying Bonobos, a mostly online company that sells menswear.
America's largest private company announced that it is shelling out $310 million dollars to buy the company and its 35 brick-and-mortar stores. Walmart will now offer Bonobos' brand via another site that it recently purchased, Jet.com, which it purchased last August for $3 billion.
Google is going to be hit with a massive fine
The European Commission, an institution of the European Union, is reportedly getting ready to fine Google over $1.1 billion ($1 billion euros). The antitrust fine comes after the company is alleged to have abused its authoritative position in the search engine market in Europe.
The European Commission concluded last July that Google had been "systematically favoring its comparison shopping service in its search page results." Sources familiar with the case told The Wall Street Journal that the European Commission is getting ready to announce the first of three antitrust decisions relating to Google's practices in Europe.
