Did Equity Compensation Drive the Sale of LinkedIn to Microsoft?

Writing in the New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin suggests that LinkedIn's emphasis on stock-based compensation pushed it to find a buyer when its stock price was suffering. The article says that LinkedIn's stock compensation was an amount equal to 16% of revenue or 96% of its operating income, citing an analysis by Mark Mahaney of RBC Capital Markets. A sharp decline in LinkedIn's share price—including a 40% decline one day in February—led to doubts about whether the company would be able to retain key employees. Selling the company to Microsoft solved that problem.