EU Clears $26 Billion Microsoft-LinkedIn Deal

BRUSSELS—The European Union on Tuesday approved Microsoft's $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn Corp., after the software giant agreed to safeguards to assuage antitrust concerns.

The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, said it was clearing the deal on the condition that, post-merger, Microsoft allowed other professional networking sites access to its Office programs for the next five years. It must also grant computer manufacturers the option not to install the LinkedIn shortcut on desktop devices, the EU said.

"A growing number of Europeans subscribe to professional social networks. Today's decision ensures that Europeans will continue to enjoy a freedom of choice between professional social networks," said EU antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager.

Microsoft announced its deal with LinkedIn in June.

The EU's approval deals a blow to Salesforce.com Inc., which lost out to Microsoft in the bidding for LinkedIn. It argued that Microsoft would gain an unfair advantage over competitors through its access to LinkedIn's vast pool of data.

However, the EU said it was unlikely the deal would allow Microsoft to shut competitors such as Salesforce.com, Oracle and SAP out of the customer relationship management market. It ruled that access to the full LinkedIn database was inessential to compete in the market.

"We've now obtained all the regulatory approvals needed to complete the acquisition and the deal will close in the coming days," Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a blog post.

To win EU approval, Microsoft also agreed to allow rival social networks to access Office's application programming interfaces, which allow discrete programs to communicate with each another.

Among other things, the measures proposed by Microsoft will allow for the display of profiles from sites other than LinkedIn in a calendar entry of a meeting.

In addition, the EU said Microsoft must allow rival networks access to Microsoft Graph, a program used to build applications that can tap data in the Microsoft cloud. Developers already have access to the program, a person familiar with the matter said.

Write to Natalia Drozdiak at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 06, 2016 12:15 ET (17:15 GMT)

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