Before the open in New York yesterday, MSFT and LNKD announced that the latter has agreed to be acquired by the former in a friendly all-cash deal for $26.2 billion, or $196 per LNKD share.  Satya Nadella, the MSFT chairman, describes the merger as the coming together of the professional cloud with professional networking.  The acquisition price, a 50% premium to where LNKD was trading beofe the announcement, represents a bit less than 7% of MSFT’s market capitalization.

The most interesting aspect of the deal is that MSFT shares only fell by 2.6% in trading yesterday, in a market that declined by 0.8%.  To me this is indicative of the tremendous positive mindset change that has happened by investors about MSFT since the end of the disastrous Steve Ballmer era.