Meta paid a $6.5 billion to $10.9 billion premium on its acquisition of WhatsApp, depending on which valuation you look at, Hemphill says. This can’t be explained away with standard business reasons for paying more for an acquisition, like synergies that would be particularly beneficial, because he says there’s no evidence Meta analyzed this. Instead, he says, the premium “reinforces the conclusion that the project was an anticompetitive project.”