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Salesforce CEO Told LinkedIn He Would Have Paid Much More Than Microsoft (recode.net)
Ina Fried, reporting for Recode: It was already known that LinkedIn chose a potentially lower all-cash acquisition offer from Microsoft rather than take on the uncertainties of a stock-and-cash deal from Salesforce. But now it has been revealed that Salesforce might have been willing to go "much higher" than Microsoft's $26.2 billion, or change other terms of its bid, had it been given the chance. In a filing with regulators on Friday, LinkedIn said a board committee met on July 7 to discuss an email from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. "The email indicated that Party A would have bid much higher and made changes to the stock/cash components of its offers, but it was acting without communications from LinkedIn," LinkedIn said in the updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
...of nothing.
Stock in the acquiring company goes down as soon as the deal becomes public, and the acquirer has to go deeper into debt to complete the deal. Then bad news comes out from either the acquirer or acquiree's latest earnings, key people leaving, etc and the stock falls some more. And there could be random external events like Brexit dropping the entire stock market.
So cash is king.
Will linkedin spam everyone on Microsoft's address book, to invite them to join Linkedin?
Vaza puta.
Cycle of life for social network companies: start-up builds up a large user base using free services, indicating a business model with optional services, selling out to a big fish, big fish digests it, squeezing out its gut. Big fish removes free services more and more, adding advertisement. User jumps to new free service. Alternatively: start-up becomes big fish and lives from eating other alive communities, remaining the big fish, as there are no alternatives.
bird in hand, and all that
I wouldn't trust either company with any deal that didn't involve cutting me a cheque. I would trust salesforce not at all but at least with a cheque there is a chance they haven't completely screwed you over. With some kind of stock / options deal. Hell no.
Microsoft has a pretty good history of buyouts resulting in the bought out company pretty much being flushed, so again, regardless of the logic, I would not do a deal that I couldn't have go complete into the toilet and still have my walking away happy.
But if both companies made me the exact same deal, at least with MS I would trust the cheque cashing and not being somehow threatened with legal crap if I didn't give it back; if only to avoid reputational damage. With salesforce I would think, "OK, these MBA types now hold all the cards, being MBA types why wouldn't they screw me?"
Does anyone use LinkedIn anymore? It has any value at all? After spamming all my professional contacts and my personal contacts, I was out.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm not sure I would be able to handle *Force and linkedin under the same roof. That's too much corporate sketchiness in one place. Granted MSFT isn't a whole lot better, but they're slightly more obvious in how they work.
How the fuck is LinkedIn worth $26 billion?
Microsoft buying LinkedIn for as much as they did was batshit. We're supposed to believe that Salesforce is even further out there and brought more money?
Log in or piss off.
Look at every single acquisition Microsoft make. They pay top dollar for someone else's innovation just as it peeks and hopes some of the technological kudos will rub off on them which it never does.
And *spying* on your customers in today's privacy paranoid world. Dumb move, from a dumb company, living on old money.
They're not. Thing is $1 to you is not worth $1 to Microsoft. Through their illegal monopoly which they only got a slap on the wrist from the government and were allowed to keep, Microsoft amassed literally billions. More money than they deserve, and more money than they know what to do with. So they can throw cash into the wind, and pay ridiculous prices like this.
There are two great times to sell something:
1) when it is not for sale.
2) when you just sold it to some else.
Seriously, does this matter to anyone? Is there actually a person anywhere who cares about this?
Can the SEC filling have consequences? Can it lead to cancel the sales to Microsoft? Or result in a fine?
I've seen it before. Companies that would be willing to drop millions (or billions) turned away. Simply because they attempted to lowball their first bid.
Also, they fail to communicate that this is a preliminary offer, and that if it's not acceptable, there's lots of room for negotiation.
As such, valuable prizes walk away from them.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I removed myself from Linkedin on the very day that Microsoft bought it. I'm not a totally rabid anti-Microsoft, but there's a sustained history of unpleasant business practices. I don't want them in my professional life, such as it is, at 65. People may say (somewhat rightly) that I have that option.
However, here is a thought experiment. If everyone closed their Linkedin account, then Microsoft is immediately out $26 billion, no rioting, no police or lawyers, nothing. This is rather beneficial flip side of if it's free, you are the product, more like if you can de-subscribe, you control the value of the product, less elegant but truthy.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This isn't really a tech problem, it is a business problem
The group that decided to sell to Mircosoft sold for less than another group was willing to pay. If it were you or I, we would have made a bad decision, we'd come to terms with it ourselves, and as we hold ourselves accountable for our actions, we'd be quick to forgive ourselves.
This group of people represented other people, they are potentially at risk if they had any personally motivating reasons to sell to one group at a lower price than another, because the lower price by itself doesn't provide greater benefit to the shareholders than the higher price.
Hopefully everything is 100% kosher and it was just a missed opportunity, but I imagine there will be people very interested in finding illicit connections on this one.