Who's stalking Salesforce? Microsoft, SAP - perhaps Oracle?

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff appoints financial advisors to handle takeover bids from unnamed suitors

Customer relationship management cloud services vendor Salesforce.com has appointed bankers to field incoming takeover bids, according to reports emerging on Wall Street tonight.

The company, valued as highly as $44bn, could be the target of any of the major enterprise software giants, including IBM, SAP and Microsoft - but Salesforce founder Marc Benioff's former employer Oracle is believed to be the front runner, with rumours suggesting that Benioff would also be lined up to replace Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in the process.

Oracle raised some $10bn this week in a bond sale that, initially, it had been thought would go towards a stock buyback scheme, in which the company borrows funds at the current record low interest rates in order to purchase its own stock on the open market, subsequently cancelling the purchased shares. The process is intended to drive up the value of the remaining shares.

However, it is now thought that Oracle may have other plans. It also holds cash and cash equivilents of around $44bn at the moment. The bonds, meanwhile, have a maturity 40 years.

In late trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Wednesday, Salesforce.com stock soared on the back of the rumours, rising by 11 per cent to close at $74.65. The company achieved full-year revenues of $5.37bn in the fiscal year to the end of January 2015, up 32 per cent, year on year. In the current financial year, Benioff has pledged to increase revenues by more than 20 per cent, achieving sales of at least $6.5bn.

Benioff and Ellison have a long "history". Benioff was a top executive at Oracle when he left in 1999 to found Salesforce.com during the "application service provider" boom. Ellison invested $2m in the start-up - until Benioff discovered that Oracle was planning a rival product, whereupon he ousted Ellison from the company.

From being close friends, the relationship was somewhat stormy for the best part of a decade until the two men buried the hatchet.

Neither Salesforce.com, nor Oracle, have responded to press requests for comment.