The Rise and Fall of Monster

Monster Worldwide was acquired by Randstad for $429 million. Monster’s market cap is $310 million, on revenues of about $667 million. Compare that to Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn for $26 billion, about the same as the company’s market cap, with revenues of about $3 billion. LinkedIn is a money-losing business and Monster is a profitable company. If Monster was valued the same way as LinkedIn, the company would have sold for $6 billion.