Boston, MA 02/20/2014 (wallstreetpr) – BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) surged in the post-market Wednesday have Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) placed a bid of $19 billion for the fast-growing messaging app WhatsApp. BBRY itself is the pioneer of mobile messaging apps and it offers BlackBerry Messaging or BBM. So what happened was that investors understood that BBRY could as well make a kill if it chooses to offer BBM for sell. In any case, there had been rumors about the same as the company struggles to retool its operations following several years of profit fallout. In the case of WhatsApp, it is evident Facebook is willing to pay about $42 for each of the more than 450 million users on the platform. Currently BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s BBM is available on other platforms such as iOS from Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Android from Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and others. The mobile messaging app trails WhatsApp in popularity at just slightly over 80 million users.
Vale SA (ADR) (NYSE:VALE)’s successful infrastructure debenture offering is now a piece of lesson that Brazil’s most indebted oil company Petrobras (PBR) is trying to borrow. VALE raised 1 billion reais last month in a debenture transaction and now Petrobras is seeking a similar transaction to raise 3 billion reais. The two Brazilian companies are doing all that is possible to raise funds for their various investment projects ahead of the presidential elections in the country. Vale SA (ADR) (NYSE:VALE) lost 16 cents per share in the regular session, a loss that continued into the post-market session where another 8 cents was lost on each share.
Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) will boost investment in Africa, more so in Nigeria, South Africa and East Africa, the company’s EMEA leader Jim Cowles told reporters in Johannesburg, South Africa. The bank is actually eying the merger and acquisition opportunities in the continent. Yet, this planned expansion in Africa comes when the bank is shrinking operations in some emerging markets. Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) EMEA boss declined to reveal how much the bank makes from its operations in Africa and also how much the company plans to invest in the continent.
