“It’s hard not to feel a little bit bad for Steve Ballmer today,” Miguel Helft reports for Fortune. “Not because he’s finally giving up the reins at Microsoft, where his 13-year tenure as CEO has been a string of disappointments for investors, but because there’s finally a figure – arbitrary as it may be – to measure that disappointment.”
“Ballmer, as it turns out, has been a $16 billion drag on Microsoft,” Helft reports. “Shortly after Microsoft (MSFT) announced his retirement Friday morning, shares surged by nearly $3, before settling at about $2 higher than the previous close of $32.39, a roughly 6% gain — on a day when the S&P 500 index is barely up. With 8.3 billion shares outstanding, that represents a surge of more than $16 billion for investors. (Mind you, the consolation prize for a bruised ego is nothing to sneeze at: Ballmer, with some 333 million Microsoft shares to his name, will net about $666 million for the day.)”
MacDailyNews Take: Golden parachute not required. And the luckiest dorm assignment in recorded history continues to pay off big time.
Helft reports, “On the outside, it’s not clear who has the chops to take on the challenge. As Meg Whitman’s ongoing struggles at HP show, righting the course of an industry giant that largely missed the tectonic shift to mobile computing will not be easy… Just last month, the company took a $900 million charge on its Surface RT, a device designed to compete with the iPad that failed to deliver.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Microsoft stock surges on Ballmer retirement news – August 23, 2013
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months as BoD initiates succession process – August 23, 2013
The next move… Board Chairman Bill Gates, citing a need for urgent action, steps in as the interim CEO (“iCEO”), while the “search” continues.
APPLE looses a GREAT Employee …. We are very sorry or see him go …..
Just a little crazy? The talking heads and investors hold out hope that Microsoft will not be Microsoft and somehow take over the world when the clown retires. In the past decade (or more) did Microsoft ever innovate anything like what people are hoping they will in 12 months?
BUT, Apple hasn’t innovated in the last few quarters so they are doomed! Doomed they say!!!
Dell, HP and the other companies pushing that Microsoft turd are bleeding money and market share. When they finish stripping the companies of employees and assets they will all look a lot like RIMM holding their Blackberrys in one hand with a “For Sale” sign in the other.
Regarding the first sentence above—no it bloody isn’t!
Perhaps now MS will allow the talented guys and gals who work there to shine through. Oh, and ditch that ridiculous stack ranking system.
=:~)
Ditch the “gals” reference too Ward Cleaver.
I can’t feel an ounce of compasion for this bloated billionaire. I would love to retire with billions.
I believe that $16 billion is short sighted. We are talking from 2007 to 2013.
The mere bump in stock value, with his retirement announcement is equivalent to all the ice being lifted off Greenland, and then the resulting rise in elevation with the displacement of that water mass.
The real damage is the total lost of value between 2007 and 2013, plus cost of development of Windows Vista, Windows 8, Surface RT and Surface Pro. Don’t forget the Kin.
Balmer’s tragic existence at Microsoft should be evaluated in the – (negative) hundreds of billions of dollars.
ZUNE ……
“I feel we’re in the market …. Driving innovation and at the end of the day, they have to, bla bla bla”
“…an industry giant that largely missed the tectonic shift to mobile computing…”
Missed?! MS didn’t miss, they just fscked it up, pure and simple! They “powered” mobile phones and tablet computers for YEARS before Apple did. How can all these idiots keep ignoring that?
Exactly. They didn’t miss a thing. They just executed as poorly as Microsoft always have.
Net’s $666 million for leaving?
Too many jokes are racing through my head to type anything right now.
Wow, I totally forgot that HP even still existed!
Ballmer and Obama share a similar record of failure! To Ballmee’s credit, at least he doesn’t blame everything on Bush!
i feel sorry for Apple, Ballmer was very good to apple and will be sorely missed. Ballmer was a apple sweety