A new report claims Microsoft's final price to acquire LinkedIn was 22% more than planned, due to several competing bids from Salesforce.
In a filing made by LinkedIn late on Friday to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the business-themed social networking service stated that Microsoft originally offered LinkedIn a deal on May 4 that was worth $160 a share in cash. However, another company, referred to by LinkedIn as "Party A" in the SEC filing, had actually proposed a bid a few days earlier for between $160 and $165 a share in a cash-share deal.
The Wall Street Journal reports that "Party A" was in fact Salesforce:
The bid from Salesforce put pressure on Microsoft to boost its offer several times. Even after LinkedIn entered an arrangement to negotiate with Microsoft exclusively, Salesforce persisted on pushing its bid. And as its stock price climbed, the value of its offer grew as well, leading LinkedIn executives to press Microsoft for more money.
Microsoft ended up on the winning side of the bidding battle, but it had to pay $196 a share to do so, or about $5 billion more than its original price. Microsoft agreed to pay $26.2 billion in cash for LinkedIn in mid-June, and the deal is expected to close by the end of 2016.
According to the site Recode there were two other parties also trying to buy LinkedIn with Party B being Google, and Party D being Facebook.
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