Microsoft’s planned $26.2 billion cash acquisition of LinkedIn is a whopper in an industry known for mega transactions.
The deal, which was announced this morning and is expected to close later this year after receiving shareholder approval, represents a 50 percent premium over LinkedIn’s closing stock price last week. It is by far the biggest acquisition in Microsoft’s history, more than triple the $8.5 billion that Microsoft paid for Skype in May 2011.
But how does the deal rank in the overall tech industry? Well, it depends on how you define it.
According to this chart from Business Insider, Microsoft’s planned purchase of LinkedIn would be the third biggest ever in the tech industry — eclipsed only by Dell’s $67 billion buyout of storage giant EMC last year and H-P’s $36 billion (in 2015 dollars) buyout of computer maker Compaq in 2001.
Now, a few caveats.
The above chart excludes the blockbuster $164 billion Time Warner-AOL merger, in part because Time Warner was a media company. It also excludes some of the mega mergers that have hit the wireless industry, such as Vodafone’s $181 billion buyout of Germany-based Mannesmann in 2000 and AT&T’s purchase of BellSouth for $86 billion in 2006. It also does not include some of the maneuvering in the cable industry, like Charter Communication’s purchase of Time Warner Cable for $55 billion or Comcast’s $47 billion buyout of AT&T Broadband in 2001.
Even so, the $26.2 billion that Microsoft is paying for LinkedIn is nothing to sneeze at.
Consider this:
—The $26.2 billion Microsoft-LinkedIn deal represents more than twice the money that venture capitalists invested in all U.S. startups in the first quarter of 2016. ($12.1 billion invested, according to the MoneyTree report).
—It represents about the equivalent of the entire combined GDPs of the countries of Nicaragua and Jamaica, according to the World Bank.
For more numbers about the deal, check out this GeekWire post: By the numbers: How LinkedIn will fit into Microsoft after $26.2B acquisition
