The Avanti Group the equities research house based in Tokyo, providing professional trading and investment research solutions to institutional and private investors across the globe have recently drawn their investor’s attention to recent developments that could see the world’s largest social networking site expanding its capabilities with the fastest growing mobile messaging company.

The world’s largest social network, Facebook Inc headed by Mark Zuckerberg, has agreed to purchase mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp Inc. for up to $19 billion in cash and stock, making it the most expensive Internet acquisition in more than ten years. The sale will comprise of $12 billion in stock, $4 billion in cash and a further $3 billion worth of restricted shares, according to a statement from Facebook. The purchase will be the largest Internet deal since the record shattering 2001 Time Warner merger with AOL valued at $124 billion. WhatsApp has more than 450 million members and is the fastest adopted service on the internet today with 1 million users being added daily.

Facebook, which bought photo-sharing service Instagram for $700 million in 2012, has been aggressively adding applications including messaging and news to attract smart phone and tablet users. The purchase of WhatsApp, which will be the company’s biggest acquisition, allowing the company to directly compete with apps from Twitter Inc, Kik Interactive Inc and Snapchat Inc, the now famous photo-message startup that rebuffed a $3 billion offer from Facebook last year.

“Given the nature of the industry at the moment, deals like the Facebook purchase of WhatsApp are the new norm. Established concerns will increasingly seek to grow their user base by acquiring fast adoption models, in this case adding an immediate 450 million users at a pen stroke,” said Murakami Hiroto, Senior Vice President of the Global Investment Division at The Avanti Group.

The $19 billion offer from Facebook prices WhatsApp at more than half that of the $31.5 billion market valuation of micro blogging service Twitter, which has 241 million active users. Shares of the Menlo Park, California based Facebook fell as much as 5.7% dropping to $64.18 in extended trading after news of the acquisition was released, before rising 1.1% to $68.06 at the close of trading in New York.

“Ultimately this deal still leaves Facebook as a partially completed entity and we here at The Avanti Group anticipate further expansion to emulate that of Chinese companies such as Tencent Holdings, Alibaba and JD.com, with the crossover into e-commerce appearing to be something that cannot be far off for Facebook, either by design or just as likely circumstance,” concluded the Senior Vice President at The Avanti Group.

The Avanti Group is an equity research house providing research and analysis outsourcing solutions for institutional financial traders worldwide, founded in early 2003.