What does an acquisition mean for the reputation of the buyer? The seller?
By Linda Forrest
When Microsoft announced that it had acquired Skype for the tidy sum of $8.5B US, the tech world positively buzzed with questions. (As an aside, the acquisition means good things for all Canadians as the Canada Pension Investment Board is looking at a 3x return on the investment it made in Skype less than two years ago! I just might get a pension yet!)
What would this acquisition mean from a functionality perspective? Was Microsoft, as ZDNet suggested, just trying to head off prospective buyers Google and Facebook? Did Microsoft wildly overpay, as TechCrunch says? Was this a strategic acquisition that will kill Skype so that Microsoft offerings that have similar functionality can dominate the market? Was this purchase, the largest in the company’s history, a good move financially for Microsoft? As the Financial Times asked, does the Skype acquisition provide the “glue” in Microsoft’s multimedia strategy? As Wired succinctly put it, “Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5B; why, exactly?” Does a boon in M&A mean a rebounding US economy?
