Microsoft to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion

 

Hey tech fans, news that is trending at the moment is that Microsoft is gear on to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion that is $196 per share. OMG! all that value has just sky rocketed LinkedIn shares by 47%. Shares of LinkedIn surged 47 percent after the announcement to near $193, while Microsoft's stock was down 3.2 percent. Trading in Microsoft had been halted briefly for news pending before the announcement of the all-cash deal. The word out there is that Microsoft has made its most ambitious move in years to reassert itself in the technology market in once dominated. LinkedIn is the most widely used site for people to advertise their professional skills and work history over the internet. 

Jeff Weiner will stay on as CEO of LinkedIn and will report to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The deal was unanimously approved by both companies' boards, and is expected to close by the end of the year. The acquisition is still subject to approval by LinkedIn shareholders and regulators.

 

In a statement to LinkedIn employees, Weiner said  

"little is expected to change" and employees will have the same titles and managers.
"The one exception: For those members of the team whose jobs are entirely focused on maintaining LinkedIn's status as a publicly traded company, we'll be helping you find your next play,"  "In terms of everything else, it should be business as usual. We have the same mission and vision; we have the same culture and values; and I'm still the CEO of LinkedIn."

     

 “This deal is all about bringing together the professional cloud and professional network,”

Microsoft has bought its way into new businesses before, though most of its largest deals have not turned out well. In 2014, it paid nearly $9.4 billion for the smartphone operations of Nokia and some years earlier spent more than $6 billion for aQuantive, an internet advertising company, but ended up writing off most of the value of those deals after they performed poorly. 

Mr. Nadella, who took over as chief executive in February 2014, was not involved in those deals. Since assuming leadership of the company, he has made mostly smaller acquisitions, with the exception of the $2.5 billion deal to acquire the maker of the game Minecraft.

Mr. Nadella said that when Microsoft pursued deals that hewed closer to a strict set of criteria, one of which is that the acquired company operates in areas that are core to Microsoft’s business, the deals have worked out.

“Every time we’ve gotten it right, we’ve had success in those dimensions,” Mr. Nadella said.

In a joint interview, Mr. Nadella and Jeff Weiner, the chief executive of LinkedIn, said that their conversations began in February, when the two began talking about different ways in which the companies could work together.

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