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Salesforce Inc., an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, announced on Friday, Jan. 27, that it has appointed three new independent board directors. It was noted that the designation took place amid the building pressure from activist investors.
As per Reuters, Salesforce added Mason Morfit, the chief executive officer of ValueAct Capital hedge fund; Arnold Donald, the CEO of Carnival Corp.; and Sachin Mehra, finance chief of Mastercard, to its board. They will be joining the company on March 1 as two directors are set to leave.
It was reported that this move of appointing new directors had been in the planning for a long time now. A source who is familiar with the matter said that this is because Robin Washington, the lead independent director, has been maneuvering the process to put more focus on operational skills.
“We are excited to welcome Arnold, Sachin, and Mason to the Salesforce Board. As highly respected business leaders, they each bring valuable experience to further enhance and balance the diverse skills on the Board and advance our value-creation initiatives,” Salesforce’s chairman and chief executive officer, Marc Benioff, said in a press release. “We look forward to benefiting from their expertise and insights as Salesforce continues to drive durable top and bottom line growth and build on our position as the world’s #1 CRM.”
In any case, the company is currently facing pressure from four activist investors, including Elliott Management which is the biggest among them. This investment firm is said to be preparing to challenge the board next month. This comes as a number of activist investors are pushing some companies to include a shareholder on the board so there will be some who can represent the views of investors.
Meanwhile, as new members arrive, Salesforce directors Sanford Robertson and Alan Hassenfeld are set to leave. They have decided not to stand for re-election after almost 10 years on the board.
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