Hacktivists Leak Colin Powell’s Salesforce Potential M&A Emails

What companies does Salesforce.com have its eye on? Fourteen companies including Tableau Software, Adobe, Pegasystems, and Qlik, to name a few. That’s according to leaked — yes, leaked — emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell who has been on the board of the San Francisco-based cloud computing company since 2014.

The emails shed light on the M&A plans Salesforce has in mind, even if some options seem outdated and already-bought.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the emails were dated for May 2016, and were leaked by the group known as “hacktivists.”

The list of fourteen also includes the likes of Seattle-based Tableau Software, San Jose-based Adobe, LinkedIn, Pegasystems, ServiceNow, Marketo, Qlik Technologies, WorkDay, Box and Zendesk.

A Salesforce spokeswoman emailed a statement to GeekWire saying that the company “has a disciplined and thoughtful M&A process where we routinely survey the industry landscape across a wide range of companies, but acquire very few.” She went on to day that the list is “a broad survey” of companies, which “doesn’t imply Salesforce ever intended to acquire them.”