DoorDash bars staff from adding Instacart colleagues on LinkedIn during $17 billion merger wait

The instructions came from an internal Q&A that DoorDash filed with the SEC on Oct. 29, the day the deal was announced. Employees should not send new LinkedIn connection requests to Instacart workers or accept requests from them, "even if you have a prior relationship." If an Instacart employee reaches out, DoorDash has a script ready: "Congrats! Looking forward to connecting after the deal closes." Anything beyond that, the company says, needs approval from its legal team. Throughout the document, DoorDash repeats that the two businesses must keep operating independently until the deal closes.

DoorDash expects the acquisition to close at the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028, subject to Instacart shareholder approval and antitrust reviews in the U.S., Canada and Israel, a timetable that could leave the LinkedIn freeze in place for up to 20 months. At $17 billion, the deal costs more than a full year of DoorDash's sales; the company, a Fortune 500 business, reported $13.7 billion in revenue last year.

The restriction reflects legal requirements designed to prevent what antitrust lawyers call "gun-jumping," when companies begin improperly coordinating their operations before a merger officially closes. The Federal Trade Commission has warned that merging companies must safeguard competitively sensitive information, including pricing, costs and business strategies, until a deal closes. Sharing that information or coordinating prices too early could violate antitrust laws, reduce competition and potentially raise prices for consumers before regulators even approve the deal. Regulators can still block a merger even without gun-jumping: in 2024, a federal judge blocked Kroger's $24.6 billion acquisition of Albertsons after the FTC argued the deal would raise grocery prices, and the companies abandoned the deal. The judge sided with the FTC on competition for shoppers but rejected its argument about competition for workers.

Restricting contact between employees of merging companies is not unprecedented. In 2018, defense contractor SAIC instructed employees not to contact workers at Engility, which it was acquiring, without clearance or coordination through its integration team. But several mergers-and-acquisitions experts told Business Insider they had never encountered a restriction specifically barring LinkedIn connections during a pending merger. LinkedIn, which says it has more than 1.4 billion members, makes it easier than ever to see who does what and where. Merger announcements can trigger anxiety and prompt employees to seek information, while a deal raises questions about who they will report to and whether their jobs will survive. A Morgan Stanley at Work article featuring executive Kate Winget encourages employees to reach out to people they already know at the acquiring company, when appropriate and approved by management.

What may look like networking to employees can look like a competitive risk to their employers. Chris Selland, a lecturer at Northeastern University, previously told Business Insider that conversations between employees could lead one company to recruit workers from the other, potentially bringing valuable customer contacts. “That could blow up the whole agreement,” he warned. He also told Fortune the restriction could protect the companies against “poaching and org-chart mapping in case the deal is ultimately blocked,” leaving them as competitors. Asked whether DoorDash is going too far, Selland described the policy as “less of a heavy-handed ban and more of a clearly-worded guardrail” intended to keep employees from inadvertently crossing contractual lines. He said conversations about job openings, compensation or shared accounts could create problems, though “a LinkedIn connection likely won't blow up a deal on its own.” The harder work comes after closing. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, who has absorbed acquisitions including Finland's Wolt, put it plainly at Fortune Brainstorm Tech last year: “M&A is very easy to get right on a sheet of paper; it's very hard to get right in practice.”