Bill Gates to Spend Rest of Life on Philanthropic Work

January 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Bill Gates to Spend Rest of Life on Philanthropic Work

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates will work on philanthropy full time for the rest of his life and contribute part time as a board member of the software maker, which is seeking a new chief executive officer.Gates, speaking in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop with Betty Liu,” didn’t indicate whether Microsoft’s board was closer to choosing a replacement for CEO Steve Ballmer, who is retiring this year.

The board began its search after Ballmer, CEO since 2000, said in August that he planned to retire from the company within 12 months. Gates has emphasized the need to find a CEO with “the ability to lead a highly technical organization and work with top technical talent.” Lead independent director John Thompson, who is heading the search committee, has said the board plans to make its decision in the “early part of 2014.”

“The board is doing important work right now,” said Gates, who created the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife in 2000. “The foundation is the biggest part of my time. I put in part-time work to help as a board member. My full-time work will be the foundation for the rest of my life. I will not change that.”

The board is considering Ericsson AB CEO Hans Vestberg and other outsiders, and internal candidates Microsoft cloud-computing chief Satya Nadella and former Nokia Oyj CEO Stephen Elop, people with knowledge of the search have said. The board hasn’t yet reached a decision and who is under consideration is still subject to change.

Limited Headway

Any new CEO will have to turn around Microsoft, whose main software business is struggling. At the same time, the Redmond, Washington-based company has made limited headway in fast-growing markets such as smartphones and tablets. Gates and Ballmer, who together hold about 8 percent of the stock, are also on the board. Their presence has deterred some candidates, raising concern that a new CEO might lack independence in the role, said people familiar with some of the candidates’ thinking.

Gates’s comments address that concern, according to Steve Ashley, a software analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.

“One of the things that had been talked about was, would you feel his breath on your neck — how much freedom would the new CEO have?” Ashley said.

Some CEO candidates have said no or dropped out of the running, people with knowledge of the search have said. Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally, 68, who had been under consideration for the Microsoft job, said this month that he plans to stay at the automaker. Mulally’s candidacy for Microsoft CEO had faded amid questions about his age and lack of technology experience, people with knowledge of the search have said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.net; Betty Liu in New York at bliu17@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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