June 2016 is barely halfway done, and it’s been a crazy month for acquisitions.
Not the least of which, of course, is the $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft.
Even if you’re a small start-up, knowing what’s going on in the upper echelons of business may give you something to shoot for in the long-run. Or at least, it’ll give you something to talk about when you’re networking with other entrepreneurs.
Here’s our acquisitions round-up for mid-June 2016:
Microsoft acquires LinkedIn
The $26.2 billion dollar price tag breaks down to about $196 per share, or $60 per user.
It’s uncertain what exactly Microsoft has planned for LinkedIn. The company’s CEO Satya Nadella describes the move in vague terms. “It’s really the coming together of the professional cloud and the professional network,” he said.
But it’s possible Microsoft only purchased the social platform for financial reasons – interest rates are low and LinkedIn’s stock is about the same as it was last year at this time. Still, many safely speculate that some sort of Office-suite integration may be in store.
Takeaways
- Social media innovations are still hot targets for deep-pocketed tech giants.
- Acquisition success doesn’t come over night. It took LinkedIn 15 years on a bumpy road to get here.
Louisiana-based CenturyLink acquires Elastic Box
In local news, one of Louisiana’s two Fortune 500 companies – Monroe-headquartered CenturyLink – acquired a multi-cloud application management service Elastic Box.
CenturyLink has been on an acquisition streak since 2015, when it acquired Tier 3 andOrchestrate, both of which are cloud technology companies.
The company will use these acquisitions to grow its massive network, which includes a 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and 55 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia.
Takeaways
- CenturyLink acquisitions bode well for Louisiana. Having a growing Fortune 500 company that continues to expand is an asset for the State.
- Louisiana entrepreneurs working in IT and cloud-services industries should keep CenturyLink on their radars. The company may have an interest in your success.