These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday! This week, tech.eu tracked 10 technology M&A transactions and 73 funding deals (totalling €276 million) in Europe and Israel.

Like every week, we listed every single one of them in our free weekly newsletter, along with interesting news regarding fledgling European startups, tech investors old and new, a number of good reads published elsewhere, government and policy news, as well as an overview of interesting lists, facts and figures from a wide variety of sources.

You can subscribe to our newsletter below to receive all this information in your inbox every Friday afternoon for free, but here's an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:

**1)** Big American companies and taxes: Europe is (still) very divided on this, and it certainly was one of the biggest news topics this week. The NYT has a good overview.

**2)** At the center of all this is - of course - Google, which agreed with the UK tax authorities to pay £130 million in back taxes, kicking off a debate across Europe whether that is enough or not.

**3)** Spotify is looking to raise $500 million in convertible notes. Noteworthy.

**4)** Sony is to acquire Israeli chipmaker Altair Semiconductor for $212 million.

**5)** Facebook has opened its second data center in Europe (in Clonee, Ireland).

**6)** Uber has been ordered to pay €1.2 million to French taxi union by a Paris court.

**7)** Rovio, the beleaguered Finnish creator of Angry Birds, has decided to spin off its education business to double down on media and games.

**8)** BT's £12.5 billion acquisition of EE is now complete.

**9)** London-based SaaS company HighQ has closed a $50 million growth equity funding round.

**10)** A deadline to draw up a new Safe Harbour agreement expires on January 31st - check out The Economist's take on the whole thing.

**Bonus link:** Seedcamp by the numbers, after 8 years of seed funding European startups