Salesforce CEO Told LinkedIn He Would Have Paid Much More Than Microsoft
You may have probably read that Microsoft got hold of LinkedIn for a whopping $26.2 billion in an all-cash acquisition. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella beat all other suitors in a $26.2 billion all-cash deal at $196 a share to acquire the world’s premier professional networking website.
One of LinkedIn’s possible suitors whom Microsoft beat was the American cloud computing company Salesforce. Perhaps the LinkedIn promoters feared uncertainties of a stock-and-cash deal offered by Salesforce. Now it is revealed that Salesforce was willing to pay much much more than Microsoft.
According to Recode, 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. This was revealed during a filing with the regulators on Friday in which LinkedIn stated that 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.
Microsoft’s Nadella sweetened the deal further for LinkedIn by offering $725 million breakup fee provision. Other suitors who were in preliminary talks with LinkedIn were Google and Facebook but they withdrew at the later date leaving only Microsoft and Salesforce.
And the rest is history.
