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When Amazon on Friday announced a $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods, John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, could barely contain his enthusiasm.

In a town hall with employees, he gushed about the impending "marriage"— a metaphor he revisited repeatedly — that was announced six weeks after a "blind date" with Amazon that he characterized as "love at first sight."

Some Whole Foods investors are decidedly dourer, however, and it appears they have a case that the deal was consummated hastily and was in the best interests of Mackey rather than of shareholders.

Not long after it was announced that Amazon had offered $42 a share to buy the high-end grocer, the stock price began creeping above the deal price, signaling that investors believed a bidding war could emerge and drive up the final price for Whole Foods.

Walmart, Target, Costco, and Kroger — whose shares all plummeted after the deal was announced — have been named as potential rival suitors. But none has entered the fray yet, and it's uncertain whether any would have the firepower to outbid Amazon. Still, there's little evidence any of these retailers were even given a shot.

While Amazon's offer represented a 27% premium over Whole Foods' stock price, analysts and investors soon began questioning whether it was too cheap. After all, a little over two years ago the company was trading at $57 a share, which would value it at over $18 billion.

Charles Kantor, a managing director at Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers, which owns nearly 3% of Whole Foods, called the offer "thrifty" and said it undervalued Whole Foods' brand.

"I think there's the argument that Amazon acquired Whole Foods for free," he told Reuters, noting that Amazon's market cap increased by almost the same amount it was paying for the acquisition. "The reaction of shareholders suggests that Amazon has left themselves lots of room to pay more for this strategic asset."

'We just fell in love'

Mackey, who called the deal a "dream come true," appears to have had a singular focus on Amazon since his first trip to Seattle six weeks ago, possibly to the detriment of shareholders.

The initial meeting lasted all of 2.5 hours, according to Mackey, but he and three other Whole Foods execs came away smitten.

"We just fell in love," Mackey said at the town hall. "It was truly love at first sight."

Mackey had every reason to fall in love, given that he and his executive team would keep their jobs under the Amazon deal.

Activist investors, specifically the hedge fund Jana Partners, had become a thorn in his side and a threat to his power in recent months, pushing for a management shake-up.

Shortly after Jana disclosed its holding in Whole Foods in April, Mackey and his team hired a top defense banker from Evercore with more than a decade of experience battling activist and hostile investors.

Evercore helped facilitate the deal with Amazon, which would secure Mackey's future as CEO and provide some relief from the beating he'd taken in the public markets in recent years.

In the town hall, Mackey described Whole Foods as "trapped" by the short-term demands of the quarterly earnings cycle — its profits and stock price have steadily declined in recent years — and effusively endorsed Amazon's big-picture approach.

"One thing I absolutely love, love so much about Amazon is they think long term," he said. "They have had the courage that almost no other public company has had: the courage to, basically, resist the drumbeat of short-term, quarterly earnings that have had us trapped here for a couple of years, as our same-store sales came down."

When an Amazon executive told the crowd that Mackey would stay on as CEO, Mackey interrupted him to chime in with: "Until death do us part."

Walter Robb, who was co-CEO with Mackey from 2010 until the beginning of this year and remains a member of the board, embraced the deal as well. But he acknowledged at the town hall that he hadn't even met the Amazon team until the night before the deal was announced.

So did Mackey prioritize his interests at the expense of shareholders?

A bidding war

An Amazon takeover of Whole Foods would almost assuredly make life easier for Mackey, but it isn't clear whether it's a good deal for shareholders.

Wall Street analysts say Whole Foods could fetch a significantly higher price for investors and that a bidding war could still erupt.

Rupesh Parikh, an analyst at Oppenheimer, said in a research note that there "could be money left on the table" and raised his target price for Whole Foods to $45.

Barclays analyst Karen Short said she thought the price for Whole Foods could go higher yet. She raised her stock-price target more than 14% over Amazon's bid, to $48, though she said the company could go for as much as $57 a share.

"Many will do anything to either make this acquisition more costly for Amazon or prevent the asset from landing in Amazon's lap," she wrote in a research note.

Short said a competing retailer, such as Walmart, could unlock up to $600 million in cost savings that could make the Whole Foods deal more profitable than it would be for Amazon.

Of course, Walmart would have to absorb the $400 million breakup fee if it outdueled Amazon for Whole Foods. But since its market value has fallen by more than $9 billion since the merger was announced, that may seem a small price to pay.

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Goldman Sachs launched Marcus, an online lending business for customers seeking loans of $30,000 or less, in October 2016.

It was a departure from what Goldman Sachs is best known for, namely, wealth management, trading, and investment banking.

And the business has already hit a $1 billion milestone, according to Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein.

Blankfein said in an interview on CNBC’s “Mad Money with Jim Cramer” that "we just crossed over a billion dollars."

"By the end of this year, we'll be crossed two billion dollars," he added. "We wanted to grow it slow to make sure we were doing a good job. But we're going to grow, you know, we're going to grow this thing."

He added that Goldman Sachs could charge three to five percentage points less than the typical interest rates on credit card balances, and still "make a great return on this."

"Most people get charged interest of 17, 18, 19, 20% or more on their credit card balances," he said. "When we do something through Marcus, again, we don't have a lot of stores or branch offices. We do things digitally. No fees. Get information online. And loans are made fairly quickly."

The impact of Marcus extends beyond the financials. According to Marcus' first employee, some of its culture is starting to rub off on the rest of the firm's divisions.

Omer Ismail, the chief operating officer of Marcus by Goldman Sachs, described the online lending business as "more casual" in an interview on the Lend Academy Podcast.

"You know, our chief architect has a nose ring, people wear jeans so there are definitely aspects that look different relative to folks that work in the investment banking division," said Ismail.

"We write on everything, we write on our walls, we write on our tables, we write on our windows, again, that's very new."

Ismail believes that some of that more relaxed, creative culture is beginning to find its way into other parts of Goldman Sachs.

"I was with the chief technology officer of Goldman and I went down to his office a couple of days ago and I noticed that now he has white walls so it's actually really cool to see how folks at Marcus are actually influencing other parts of Goldman."

Even some more traditional team-building practices are being incorporated by other divisions of Goldman Sachs.

"We have a weekly huddle where the entire Marcus team gets together and talks about a particular topic for the week," said Ismail. "I was in a meeting last week with the head of our HCM, Human Capital Management, our HR area and Edith Cooper who heads up HCM was telling me that she started having weekly huddles."

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Miner and investor 'P4man' looks at the altcoin market to see if there is a credible alternative to bitcoin. Can ethereum cut the mustard?

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Miner and investor 'P4man' looks at the altcoin market to see if there is a credible alternative to bitcoin. Can ethereum cut the mustard?

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LONDON — Online mortgage marketplace LendInvest saw revenue growth slow and profits dive last year as it invested for growth and dealt with "challenging" market conditions.

Accounts seen by Business Insider show LendInvest's revenue grew from £18.6 million to £22.1 million in the year to March 2017. That's a significant slowdown on the prior year when revenues jumped to £18.6 million from £7.2 million in 2015.

The company made a loss of £1 million in the year to March 2017, down from a pre-tax profit of £2.4 million in 2016. Operating profits shrunk from £3.3 million to £52,000.

LendInvest, founded in 2008, lets people invest in property loans to developers looking to do up and sell houses. It finances loans through its online investment portal and a dedicated fund.

CEO and cofounder Christian Faes says the slump in profits was largely down to investing for growth.

"It was always going to be a year of investment last year," he told Business Insider. "We'd taken equity investment the year before. We had a lot of costs associated with that investment.

"Our team grew quite significantly and we also spread the geographical reach. We've got a team now in Manchester, York, and up in Scotland. We've moved into a new office, had fairly large fit-out costs. We implemented Pepper, which is an external servicing platform that helps us get access to institutional investors. And the other big cost we had was buying out our Chinese investor, which had certain costs associated with it."

Beijing Kunlun invested £22 million in LendInvest in 2015 but the startup ended up repaying the investment in October of last year. Faes says the move came after a change of plans for Beijing Kunlun, which has been looking to increase investments in Europe but decided to focus domestically instead.

Addressing one-off costs last year, Faes said: "Those are the things you can strip out and see the underlying business was very strong. Having made that investment, we're certainly back on track now. Q1 2017 was the best quarter we've had in terms of lending growth, profitability, and revenue. It looks like Q2 will beat Q1. That investment is starting to pay off."

"Q1 2017 was the best quarter we've had in terms of lending growth, profitability, and revenue. It looks like Q2 will beat Q1. That investment is starting to pay off."

As well as investment costs, Faes says difficult market conditions last year contributed to slowing growth and profit slump.

"There's no denying that last year, the market conditions were challenging," Faes said. "The biggest challenge we had was actually the Stamp Duty increase, more specific changes to the property market. In some respects that actually made us more focused, not actually just relying on the momentum of the property market and the buzz around fintech."

He added: "Brexit was not ideal but for us we're just moving on."

2017 has the potential to be just as difficult, with data suggesting a continued slowdown in the property market and more political uncertainty in the form of the hung parliament and the start of Brexit negotiations.

Faes is unphased, saying: "I think for us, we fundamentally believe that there are not enough houses being built. There's a fundamental shortage of housing in the UK. Our business really does address that issue in a very real way. We're lending to property entrepreneurs. For us, that keeps us going.

"There's going to be headwinds, there are headwinds but until there's a glut of housing I think our business will do very well."

Faes told Business Insider last year that LendInvest is planning to launch a buy-to-let loan product and says plans are still in progress.

"We have a couple of term sheets that we're working through now with banks," he said. "We've been running a process over the past two or three months to get a funding line. We're pretty confident that we're going to get there and be able to make an impact in that space. That's where the business gets taken to the next level. We're moving into a very, very deep market."

Faes said the product is likely to launch in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

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LONDON — One year ago today, having gone to bed with rain pouring down outside, Brits awoke to glorious sunshine — and the news that they'd voted to leave the European Union.

What followed on Friday, June 24, 2016, was a day of political and financial chaos unprecedented in Europe since the heart of the global financial crisis. Markets around the world crashed, investors flooded into safe havens like gold, and panic spread.

Business Insider took a look back at one of the wildest days in recent markets history. Check out a handful of the biggest movements and scariest moments:

The pound crashes to a 31-year low

Sterling dived off a cliff, losing around 3% of its value, after early morning results show the northern city of Sunderland voting more heavily for Brexit than had been expected. Up until this point, most had expected the Remain campaign to win but Sunderland's voting pattern was taken as a sign that the Leave campaign could clinch it.

As more results rolled in, the pound continued to tank and lost more than 10% of its value at its lowest point. By the end of the day, the currency had recovered a little and was down 8% or so to trade close to $1.36.

It would be the biggest single day fall for a major currency since the Second World War.

"All necessary steps"

At 7.00 a.m, as Brits are starting to wake up, the Bank of England issues a statement saying it is willing to take "all necessary steps" to fulfil its responsibilities and safeguard the UK in an attempt to calm crazy volatility in the markets.

"The Bank of England is monitoring developments closely. It has undertaken extensive contingency planning and is working closely with HM Treasury, other domestic authorities and overseas central banks," it said.

"The Bank of England will take all necessary steps to meet its responsibilities for monetary and financial stability."

Later in the morning, Governor Mark Carney would give a speech reassuring investors and saying that the Bank was "ready to provide more £250 billion of additional capital to its normal operations."

The FTSE 100 drops like a stone

Britain's benchmark share index, the FTSE 100 plunges more than 500 points as the markets open.

European stocks crashed in a straight line at the open. There were fears that falls were so big that the London Stock Exchange would halt trading as automatic circuit breakers were triggered.

The index gradually recovered over the course of the day and has gained 17% in the year since the result.Banking stocks were the biggest victims of the early morning stock market crash, with the likes of RBS, Barclays, and Lloyds losing in excess of 30% of their market value in a matter of seconds.

Contagion spread across the globe with US stock futures tanking, and bourses all around Europe witnessing enormous losses. Germany's DAX ended the day 6.8% lower, while France's CAC was close to 8% down at the close.

Bank CEOs react

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told his staff there was "no immediate change to the way we conduct our business," while JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon said: "There are no changes to the structure of our clients' relationships with JPMorgan Chase or their ability to work with our firm."

In the UK, Barclays CEO Jes Staley told employees that he did "not pretend to have all the answers" after the vote and Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio moved to reassure staff that the bank's contingency plans in event of a Brexit were being activated.

Gold goes bananas

The price of gold jumps more than 5% as investors looked for the safety provided by the physical presence of the precious metal. Analysts project that gold's rally will continue.

"The argument for a gold rally is straightforward," said James Steel, chief precious metals analyst at HSBC. "The uncertainty spurred by this vote will likely elicit sufficient gold purchases to buoy prices. The link is the interconnection between gold and wider financial markets."

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