(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
By Robert Cyran
NEW YORK, April 16 (Reuters Breakingviews) - A swarm of pushy investors last year pushed the software firm into cutting costs, returning capital, and de-emphasizing dealmaking. Now it’s mulling a takeover of $11 bln Informatica, the WSJ says. The price will signal whether founder and CEO Marc Benioff has changed his ways.
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CONTEXT NEWS
Salesforce is in advanced talks to buy Informatica, the Wall Street Journal reported on April 12, citing people familiar with the matter.
Informatica is a software company that helps companies extract, clean up and analyze data. Private equity firm Permira and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board own 75% of the company. A consortium that included the two institutions took Informatica private in 2015 for about $5.3 billion. The company went public again in 2021.
Activist investors including Starboard Value, ValueAct Capital, Third Point, Elliott Investment Management and Inclusive Capital Management took stakes in Salesforce in 2022 and early 2023 and raised concerns about the company’s governance, profit margins, and history of making large acquisitions. The company subsequently cut costs, bought back shares, disbanded its M&A board committee and added multiple directors to the company’s board including Mason Morfit, the chief executive of ValueAct Capital.
(Editing by Peter Thal Larsen and Sharon Lam)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on robert.cyran@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: robert.cyran.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
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