In a move that’s sure to inspire confidence (sarcasm), Bill is taking his money out of Microsoft and heading elsewhere…
As Information Week reports, Gates has reduced his stock holdings by 13 percent, with ten million shares sold as recently as last week.
Officials say that Gates is just doing as all investors do and diversifying his portfolio. But also possible is that Gates, like all investors, wants to see a real return on his money. Information Week notes that a return on Microsoft stock today would be 2.74% — paltry compared to Apple’s 38.8% or even IBM’s 17.37%.
Gates now holds roughly 591 million Microsoft shares, or about 7% of the 8.4 billion shares outstanding, and remains its largest single stockholder.
The other interesting quote from the story..
What’s new is that CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s second largest shareholder, may finally have had enough of seeing his company play also-ran to the latest new kid on the block while his own stock options languish.
Reports Tuesday indicate Ballmer is set to shake up Microsoft’s management ranks in a big way, following his recent decision to relieve Bob Muglia from his duties heading the company’s highly profitable Server & Tools division. Bloomberg says Ballmer’s next move could be to elevate engineering and product specialists to senior positions in an effort to return Microsoft to its software engineering roots. It would also reduce the perception (or reality) that Redmond has become nothing more than a giant marketing shell for a portfolio of disparate and outdated technologies.
Stay tuned for more news about this..
All Comments
Of course he is slowly divesting of MS stock. He’s a businessman and can see the writing on the wall.. not rocket science…
Im not worried, I would be if he suddenly started buying apple stock ;).
Bill Gates is selling Microsoft stock because he’s giving most of his assets to his and his wife’s charitable organization. He’s been doing this for years, and it has nothing to do with either value or nonvalue of Microsoft shares, although I’m sure he’s selling when the price is high, just as any investor would do. It isn’t news.