Microsoft picked up LinkedIn for
a cool $26.2 billion last month, and it was a good snag. Not only was the deal
the largest acquisition at Microsoft so far under CEO Satya Nadella's reign,
but the company successfully managed to hold off a number of other potential
suitors from picking up the business-themed social network instead.
As Recode reports, a recent
filing with the Securities and Exchange commission indicates that there were up
to five companies in total all vying for LinkedIn. One was definitely Salesforce,
and that probably gave Microsoft the biggest competition for the purchase. They
both entered into a bidding war for LinkedIn fairly early on in the
discussions, jumping from a price of around $160 per share to Salesforce's
final offer, $85 in cash and a portion of Salesforce stock that worked out to
just around $200 per share. Microsoft ended up winning with its bid of $196 per
share, straight cash.
Facebook is also rumored to be
one of the parties that was interested in LinkedIn. It's unclear if Facebook
even managed to make a bid, but the company ultimately dropped out of talks
around April—likely due to the worry that the cost for LinkedIn would be too
great. (And it only took around six days for the potential acquisition to go
from the "let's chat about it" to the "Zuckerberg says no"
stage.)
Google appeared to have a greater
chance to pick up LinkedIn, as representatives had met up with LinkedIn CEO
Jeff Weiner in mid-March after both Microsoft and Salesforce had expressed
interested in acquiring LinkedIn. According to Business Insider, the initial
talks went well enough that Google representatives were interested in setting
up future meetings to discuss a potential Google acquisition of the company.
Google made its interest official on April 4, but bowed out just shy of one
month later—preferring instead to go for a "commercial partnership"
if LinkedIn was interested, rather than a formal acquisition.
We don't yet know who the fifth
party in the potential purchase is, nor have any rumors surfaced up as to who
it might be. We're also curious if any other companies were also interested in
LinkedIn—sharks in the Silicon Valley waters, given LinkedIn's attractive stock
price at the time.
Source: pcmag.com
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