Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft board of directorsTop Stories

March 14, 2020 12:18
Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft board of directors

(Image source from: economictimes.indiatimes.com)

Bill Gates has said that he would be stepping down from the board of Microsoft Corp., which is a company that has been co- founded by him in the year 1975 and he had built the company Microsoft into world’s largest software maker.

He is doing so in order to devote more time to philanthropy of the company Microsoft.

Bill Gates who is of 64 years of age has been scaling back his involvement in the Redmond which is a Washington- based company. He has been scaling back in his involvement for more than a decade and he had been serving as a adviser to Satya Nadella who is the Chief Executive Officer, on areas of technology which would also include the productivity, health software and the artificial intelligence and he would be continuing to do so.

Bill Gates has written a blog post where in he has mentioned that Microsoft would always be an important part in his work of life and that he would be continuing to be engaged with the current Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and also with the technical leadership in order to help in shaping the vision and to achieve the ambitious goals of the company.

Microsoft has said in a statement that Bill Gates hasn’t been active in a day- to- day role since the year 2008 and that is the period when he had switched to devoting most of his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the statement, it has been said that Bill Gates now wants to spend more time in working on global health, education and also in tackling the change in the climate.

Bill Gates has served as a Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft until the year 2000 which is the same year where in his foundation has been started and he had been the chairman of the company until the February in the year 2014.

Under the leadership of Bill Gates, Microsoft has grown from the provider of a basic software code which is used for running a business and the home machines during the early years of the personal computers into a dominant provider of the software in computing from the workplace productivity to the internet and also gaming.

The company has attracted the challenges from the antitrust regulators during the peak of its reach along with the United States calling it as a monopoly and suing to break it up. Microsoft had ended up in settling the case and also in avoiding the harshest penalties.

Under Steve Ballmer who is the successor of Bill Gates, the position of Microsoft in the tech industry has been challenged by the competitors like Google and a resurgent Apple Inc.

In the year 2014, Nadella had took over from Steve Ballmer from when the company has focused on the cloud computing as the growth has evaporated in the PC market, in which the pioneer had been helped by Microsoft during the 1980s.

A revenue growth of 14 per cent has been posted by Microsoft for the past two fiscal years which had been helped by increasing the sales of the software and computing over the internet.

It has been said that although there exists a steep decline in the stock during the recent weeks along with the rest of the market in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company is still said to have a market capitalization of more than $1.2 trillion.

Nadella has said in a statement that Microsoft would be continuing to get benefited from the on going technical passion of Bill Gates and also the advice that has been given to drive forward the products of Microsoft and also the services.

He added saying that, “I am grateful for Bill’s friendship and look forward to continuing to work alongside him to realize our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more."

Michael Levine who is an analyst at Pivotal Research Group has said that the successful transition of the company to new business and the return to growth would mean that the share holders are unlikely to be considered that the founders of the Microsoft company has been less involved, as said by an analyst Michael Levine on Bloomberg Television.“I think people would feel differently if they had not done such a tremendous job of transforming the business," Michael Levine has said.

Bill Gates would be exiting the board of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which is the company that is said to be run by the long term friend of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett. It has been said that Kenneth Chenault who is the former Chief Executive Officer of American Express Co., would be joining the board of Berkshire, as a part of the shuffle said the company of Buffett in a regulatory filing on Friday.

By Shrithika Kushangi

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Microsoft  Bill Gates