Microsoft Stop Talks to buy Salesforce

Anyone keeping an eagle eye on the stock exchange in recent weeks would have noticed a spike in the share prices of Salesforce.com. This stemmed from reports from Bloomberg that an unspecified company was in talks to buy the company. Earlier this month a similar event happened, but this was caused by the interest shown from global giant Microsoft.

Earlier this month a similar event happened, but this was caused by the interest shown from global giant Microsoft. It has been confirmed that talks have taken place; taken place and ended with no further confirmation of a purchase going ahead.

According to multiple people familiar with the situation, Microsoft was prepared to offer around $55 billion (~£35.5 billion) for the cloud company. The Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff aimed to push the asking price higher; as high as $70 billion. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was hesitant to seal the deal with such a high asking price that will affect Microsoft in such a massive way.

$55 billion is a huge amount if this went through; it would have been the largest acquisition the company has ever made by a large margin. Largest purchase to date was Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, Nokia second at $7.2 billion and third would be Quantive for $6.3 billion back in 2007.

What do you think would have happened to Microsoft if the deal did take place? For better or for worse? Let us know in the comments.

Thank you to ArsTechnica for providing us with this information.