Salesforce considers new board member additions following Elliott Management’s activist stake

Yahoo Finance Live takes a look at Salesforce shares as it contemplates taking on new board members.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: Let's get you up to speed on Salesforce. Shares moving to the upside this afternoon, now up just over 4%. The move here coming following a report from Bloomberg that the enterprise software company is discussing appointing new board members. The names being discussed include former Carnival CEO Arnold Donald, also Mastercard CFO Sachin Mehra. Now the report also states that there are discussions about adding ValueAct Capital Management CEO Mason Morfitt to the board as well.

Salesforce has become a target for activist investors, most recently this week, Elliott Management, which took a multi-billion dollar stake in the company. And Dave, like you and I have been talking about this week, when Elliott Management enters the picture, people listen.

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah, Patrick Gadson, who's an activist investor attorney joined us just a couple of days ago, said they are basically the Godzilla of the space. They get what they want. They take as much time as they want. And they spend as much money as they want to get their results, but he also said that news that Elliott Management was involved here probably was because either talks had broken down, or there was some sort of agreement to satisfy Paul Singer/Elliott Management.

And it looks like, Seana, that he was probably fortuitous in that that they had some sort of board agreement in place, and Elliott wanted to get credit for that. That's just me reading into that. They wanted credit for that, therefore leaking the story.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, certainly. We will wait to see if we hear anything from Salesforce, either confirming or denying those reports.