By Rachael King 

Salesforce.com Inc. Chief Executive Marc Benioff, who lost a bidding war for LinkedIn Corp. to Microsoft Corp., told the social networking company that he would have made a stronger bid had it continued talks with him after its call for final offers. The information appeared Friday in a LinkedIn regulatory filing.

Microsoft Corp. on June 13 said it would acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

According to the filing, the CEO of "Party A" -- previously identified by The Wall Street Journal as Salesforce -- sent an email to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman after reading a July 1 regulatory filing that detailed events leading up to LinkedIn's May 12 call to the two bidders for "best and final offers," and its subsequent agreement to negotiate exclusively with Microsoft.

Mr. Benioff's email said he would have offered a "much higher" price and a different mix of cash and stock had LinkedIn continued to communicate with his company.

LinkedIn said in the filing that it received its last offer from Salesforce on June 5, after it had signed the exclusivity agreement. The social networking company noted that the bid didn't include a higher price or a different mix of cash and stock than Salesforce had offered previously. LinkedIn's Transactions Committee reviewed the situation and decided not to respond, according to the filing.

Persistent bidding by Salesforce during the two months before LinkedIn's agreement to negotiate exclusively with Microsoft ultimately raised the price of the deal by 22%, or $5 billion.

Write to Rachael King at rachael.king@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 22, 2016 21:50 ET (01:50 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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