When the CEO of a $284 billion company announces his retirement on the second-to-last Friday of the summer, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this wasn’t a voluntary reboot.
When the stock of said company adds $20 billion in market value on the news, investors are obviously applauding a reboot in CEO suite.
Such was the case on Friday when Microsoft announced that its chief executive of the past 13 years, Steve Ballmer, would be stepping down.
The announcement touched off endless analysis of Ballmer’s mis-steps and missed opportunities — a lost decade-plus marked by failures in phones and search engines, and flawed releases of many of its Windows upgrades.
Ballmer also failed to groom a successor and allowed the Microsoft workplace to become increasingly dysfunctional.
But Microsoft’s warts under the Ballmer regime have been apparent for years, with no signs of unrest in the boardroom.
The big news last week is that change-demanding investors on Wall Street have scored their first big fish.
“Ding-dong, he’s gone,” one hedge-fund manager with a big position in the software giant told me Friday.
And that’s very good news for investors. While the summer headlines have been focusing on publicity-hungry hedgies like Bill Ackman, scores of other investors have been quietly but forcefully agitating for change, with increasingly positive results, sans headlines.
The sudden decision by Ballmer to step down came as ValueAct, a hedge fund with a $2 billion investment in Microsoft shares, was moving to secure a seat on the board and threatening a proxy fight. Other institutional investors have contacted ValueAct to voice their support.
Ballmer’s sudden retirement may pay dividends for millions of investors if it pumps new blood into the executive suites of other slumbering giants.