SAP Boss Denies Salesforce Takeover Rumors

SAP (SAP) chief executive Bill McDermott emphatically denied rumors the enterprise software giant has interest in taking over CRM provider Salesforce.com, despite the company’s repeated mention as a possible suitor.

“We always tried to buy assets that were the best-in-class, or that were ascending in value and actually bring new and innovative solutions to market,” he said, as V3.co.uk reported.

“We have never bought something that we thought was impaired or on the decline or actually commoditised, and therefore have zero interest in Salesforce.com,” McDermott said. “Nor have we ever had any interest in Salesforce.com, so let’s just take that off the table.”

McDermott’s comments came in response to questions addressed to him at SAP’s Sapphire Now 2015 event in Orlando, FL, V3.co.uk reported.

Word surfaced last week that a number of IT heavyweights might consider buying out Salesforce with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and SAP at the top of a list of likely suspects.

A subsequent report said Microsoft was mulling over bidding for Salesforce after learning another potential suitor approached the CRM provider.

Salesforce reportedly has hired two investment bankers to help it handle and evaluate takeover offers, ranging from spurning bids to hammering out a deal. At this point, no offer publicly has surfaced.

The news again fueled a feeding frenzy on Salesforce’s stock on Tuesday, with shares jumping 6 percent in afternoon trading. On Wednesday, the stock ran up another 1.4 percent to finish at $73.79, giving the company a market valuation of $47.7 billion.

The stock is up more than 47 percent in the trailing 12 months.

Salesforce posted sales of $4.07 billion for the full year 2014 and expects revenue to reach $5.3 billion in fiscal 2015.