Salesforce hires bankers to help ward off takeover offers

US cloud software company Salesforce.com Inc is working with bankers to help it ward off takeover offers after being approached by a potential suitor, Bloomberg yesterday reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

There is no certainty any deal will take place, but bankers may help it fend-off any acquirer or work out an eventual sale, the report said.

Salesforce, which has a market value of about $44 billion, would be the largest takeover ever of a software company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez, Salesforce is one of the largest US software as a service (SaaS) companies.

Post listing on the New York Stock Exhange in 2004, the San Francisco, California-based company has grown through 32 acquisitions but has never posted profit since inception.

With its industry-leading CRM platform, Salesforce has become the world's leading enterprise cloud ecosystem using the latest innovations in mobile, social, and cloud technology.

Its cloud-based CRM software provides sales representatives with a complete customer profile and account history, allows the user to manage marketing campaign spending and performance across a variety of channels from a single application, tracks all opportunity-related data, decision makers, customer communications, and any other information unique to the company's sales process.

Its customers include Coca-Cola, Financial Times, Philips, Sony, Avon, L'oreal, Canon, Electronic Arts, Wells Fargo Bank, Yamaha and several other Fortune 500 companies.

It competes with Oracle, Microsoft Corp. and SAP SE.