Surrounding this acquisition purchase came many queries questioning the future success of such a transaction. With an alarming price tag attached to the bill, Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn is by far the largest purchase it has made in history. With a pretty poor track record in large acquisitions, (with the exception of Skype of course), it remains to be seen if this one is any different. CEO Satya Nadella has been leading Microsoft since early 2014 and feels it is his job to turn the poor history of buyouts into a noble future in regards to this acquisition.
Microsoft’s current revenue just falls short of $100bn and it has acquired and maintained many services that are still growing. With a staggering one in seven people on the planet using / having access to Microsoft Office there is still room to progress with integration strategies and further data exploration that can lead to invaluable insight for the tech giant. There is however a lot more to be proved with the LinkedIn purchase and it remains to be seen how Microsoft can really use this takeover to its greatest advantage. While the purchase may seem attractive at once allowing Microsoft to take hold of 433 million subscribers, LinkedIn is still declaring a loss and is currently not profitable. It is clear however that Microsoft has a set idea on how it will make benefit of the professional network social media platform, it is just a case of implementing the correct plan.
There are risks involved with every purchase, but when paying $26.2bn for one, there is pressure to prove the move was of great benefit and other opportunity costs were correctly left behind. With LinkedIn struggling to proportion its advertising services and with immediate slowdowns in growth, it sold to Microsoft at a blameless time whereby the scale and size Microsoft has in mind for the digital platform is way beyond the scalable aspect LinkedIn could have ever achieved with its current resources.
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