With a huge pool of 2.5 million professionals spanning the globe, the acquisition of vWorker represents a massive boost to Freelancer.com's already market-leading user-base of 4.4 million professionals.
That gives Itaú an attractive currency with which to scour the globe for acquisitions.
As a result, the team's first rule was to scour the globe for overlooked acquisition candidates.
Now it's looking to bring that same technology to smaller firms around the globe with the acquisition of Semantria, whose Excel-based sentiment analysis tool offers an easy, affordable way to find out the emotions behind customer satisfaction ratings.
Cisco has 50 executives scouring the globe for technology acquisitions.
This initiative facilitated Chinese companies' expansion around the globe, but their acquisitions have often been marred by vast inefficiencies and corruption.
Another childhood acquisition, a globe purchased in a thrift shop when he was a boy, became the basis for a collection that now numbers 50 or 60. "When I was 8 years old, my mom and I spent a lot of time going to thrift shops because we were very poor," he recalls.
Beck's passion for HR and management comes from over two decades of building and managing teams from two to thousands around the globe, and led to his acquisition of Kenexa, a human-capital management company, the sixth-largest acquisition IBM had ever made.
"This business can be a good capital generator, helping the company to afford future stock buybacks, pay dividends and drive the expansion of acquisitions across the globe," said Eric W. Aboaf, the chief financial officer overseeing the North American consumer business in an interview yesterday.
