Salesforce.com is working with financial advisers to help it field takeover offers after being approached by a potential acquirer, people with knowledge of the matter said.
There is no certainty any deal will transpire, the people said, asking not to be named because the information is private. The people didn’t identify potential acquirers. Bankers may help rebuff any suitor or work out an eventual sale, one of the people said.
A takeover of Salesforce, which had a market value of nearly $44 billion as of Monday’s close, would be the largest ever of a software company, data compiled by Bloomberg show. For an acquirer, the bid would mark an aggressive push into cloud computing — the delivery of business software and services via the Internet. Salesforce jumped 17 percent as of 2:51 p.m. in New York, giving it a market value of $51 billion.
Salesforce would buttress the portfolios of its largest rivals: Oracle, Microsoft and SAP. All these companies have their own customer relationship management technologies but trail Salesforce’s products in market share, according to an annual ranking by researcher Gartner Inc., published last May.
Chi Hea Cho, a spokeswoman for Salesforce, declined to comment.
An acquisition of San Francisco-based Salesforce would top the $27.5 billion leveraged buyout of First Data Corp. in 2007, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
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Salesforce reportedly fielding takeover offers
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