Buffett Sees Zero Chance of Gates Returning as Microsoft CEO

October 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Buffett Sees Zero Chance of Gates Returning as Microsoft CEO

Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said Bill Gates’s focus on philanthropy makes it impossible that the Microsoft Corp. co-founder will return to the company as chief executive officer. “The chances of that are zero,” Buffett told Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu in an interview today. “He is doing exactly what he wants to do in life, and he’s doing it well and it takes his full-time energy.” Microsoft is searching for a new CEO after Steve Ballmer said he would step down from the world’s largest software maker. Gates, 57, is chairman of Microsoft and serves on the board of Berkshire. In 2006, Buffett committed a majority of his wealth to the foundation run by Gates and his wife, Melinda. Gates is “flying around the world a very significant percentage of the time, and he is engaging governments in his efforts,” said Buffett, 83. “He has got more than a full-time job at the Gates Foundation, and obviously cares about Microsoft, but he’s not going back.” Buffett appeared today alongside his son and grandson, both named Howard, to promote a new book, “40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World.” The text describes lessons the billionaire’s son learned from his years working to improve food security around the world. The elder Buffett has also given funds to foundations overseen by his three children.

To contact the reporters on this story: Noah Buhayar in New York at nbuhayar@bloomberg.net; Zachary Tracer in New York at ztracer1@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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