Salesforce officially walks away from Twitter acquisition for real this time

Salesforce wants to make things super clear for everyone — no, the company won’t buy Twitter. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff gave an interview to the FT and said that the companyruled out the acquisition.

“In this case we’ve walked away. It wasn’t the right fit for us,” Benioff told the FT. If you were looking for an official confirmation, it can’t get more official than that.

Two weeks ago, nearly all suitors announced at the same time that they weren’t interested by Twitter after all. Google, Apple and Disney don’t want to buy Twitter anymore. Salesforce was the last remaining suitor.

While the company could have used this opportunity to lower the acquisition price, it wasn’t the case. During an investor meeting, Benioff already said that Twitter wasn’t the right fit for Salesforce. He even ended up saying “I wish Jack very well.”

But many thought Benioff was quite excited about the idea of buying Twitter. So what happened exactly? Salesforce’s largest shareholder Fidelity Investments was against the deal. And given that Fidelity owns 14 percent of Salesforce, it would have been hard to buy Twitter with the board’s approval. This is probably the wisest decision for Benioff.

Following the FT’s interview, Twitter shares are crashing once again. Shares are down 6.86 percent to $16.57. Twitter’s market cap is now $11.6 billion.

via:techcrunch