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Wednesday 2 October 2013

Microsoft CEO Bill Gate to stepdown

Bill Gates is the man who built Microsoft from nothing – he created the single most influential technology company of our modern age, and it made him so wealthy that he is able today to focus on eradicating various diseases that have killed millions. The real miracle of Microsoft is not that Windows is on almost every PC, but rather that Gates may even succeed in wiping out polio and malaria across huge swathes of the globe.
Yet Gates is still also chairman of Microsoft, despite admitting that his main focus is now on his charitable foundation.
There’s nothing wrong with that per se – computers and their pioneers can both multitask – but some investors are finally wondering if today Microsoft needs a new chairman, largely because they suspect Gates’s mere presence at the top of the board hobbles any chief executive’s ability to make the changes some argue the company needs.
It’s a plausible approach, from three investors who between them own slightly more than Gates’s own 4.5pc of Microsoft, and it’s provoked mixed reactions: some argue Gates should take a bigger role, reckoning his vision and insight is just what Microsoft needs. Others argue he’s simply over the hill, even if nobody doubts his searing intellect. Either way, the idea posits Gates as a man who is unwilling to see the merits of a significant shift in strategy, even though he has overseen several in his time as both chief executive and chairman.
There is, of course, a third way. If Microsoft appoints the right chief executive – many tip Ford’s Alan Mulally – then they might get a man or woman robust enough to stand up to the founder, and end up benefiting from both rather than simply swapping one gambling vision for another. But what is certain is that Microsoft is vast and complex, ranging from Xbox to the Surface tablet to Windows, Windows Phone, Office , Skype and all its server products. It needs a chairman who understands it in real detail, and it’s hard to see who could do that better than Bill Gates.


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