
Bill Gates has stepped down from Microsoft's board - janvdberg
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/microsoft-announces-change-to-its-board-of-directors-301023293.html
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chollida1
Also stepped down from the Berkshire board as well.

Given that he stepped away from a day to day role in 2008 and then stepped
down as the chairman in 2014, I'm guessing he's focusing on his foundation.

He's still the 8th largest shareholder according to Bloomberg's
records(103,000,000 share), which is pretty impressive given that the 7
entities above him are all funds.

Incase you wanted to know who the remaining 12 board members are:

With Gates’ departure, the Board will consist of 12 members, including John W.
Thompson, Microsoft independent chair; Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock
Partners; Hugh Johnston, vice chairman and chief financial officer of PepsiCo;
Teri L. List-Stoll, executive vice president and chief financial officer of
Gap, Inc.; Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft; Sandra E.
Peterson, operating partner, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; Penny Pritzker, founder
and chairman, PSP Partners; Charles W. Scharf, chief executive officer and
president of Wells Fargo & Co.; Arne Sorenson, president and CEO, Marriott
International Inc.; John W. Stanton, chairman of Trilogy Equity Partners; Emma
Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK); and Padmasree Warrior, founder,
CEO and president, Fable Group Inc.

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daxfohl
Kind of odd, being an employee there, I've never heard of eleven of the twelve
board members before.

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sytelus
Most of the board members seem to be partners at various investment firms.
Many of them don't seem to even remotely tech people. It's kind of sad that
the Microsoft board lacks any external visionaries.

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lacker
At a huge company like Microsoft the board isn't really a great place for
visionaries. It's much better at things like helping the CEO understand the
thoughts of large institutional investors that provide Microsoft with capital.
A visionary is better suited as a "special advisor" to someone... like the
role that Bill Gates is keeping.

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njarboe
With cash on hand of around $140 billion, I'm not sure Microsoft really needs
to worry about outside capital. I would think the board could help with how to
keep those big companies paying for everyone to have the full Microsoft Office
suite and how to custom price it.

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maest
They still care about share price, which depends on outside investors willing
to buy the shares, which depends on MS having good IR, which some of the board
members help with.

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a13n
I would guess that Bill Gates has been looking to do this for a while now, and
this is just a good time PR-wise. It won't tank the stock anymore than it
already has because the market's crashing, and people have other stuff to
worry about.

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vesinisa
Eh, I honestly don't think he has to care how much any news would marginally
affect the stock or not. Unless he actually cares if he or Bezos is the #1
wealthiest person -- both being anyways astronomically rich at the end of the
day.

I didn't in fact even know he still had a role in Microsoft. My understanding
was first Ballmer and then Nadella took over running the show years ago. So I
don't think it's not even going to to affect investor sentiment that much.

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zizee
> Unless he actually cares if he or Bezos is the #1 wealthiest person

He could also care about whether his actions have a negative impact on others.

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jimbob45
Whichever poster it was the other day saying that this was the optimal time to
send out bad news as a company seems to have been astute.

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davidw
Friday afternoons are generally a time when they'll dump out bad news.

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ChuckMcM
Much better when you have a pandemic going on. A friend of mine who is a CFO
told me this sort of thing is used by CFOs in all companies to "clean the
balance sheets" of bad news. Basically writing off things and taking losses
with the excuse "the <name> disaster has really hit us hard but we expect to
emerge stronger than ever."

The reason for this strategy is that it is difficult for an aggravated
shareholder to prove that the thing they are writing off was their fault. It
is a giant get out of jail free card for contradicting any previous guidance
or other statements simply "because disaster."

As a result, the statements from companies on their Q1 results will be a lot
of "we've been hit hard by this disaster" and they will dump a lot of things
off their balance sheets that they should have dumped off prior to this, take
a hit in their stock price but no one will be "guilty" of causing the stock
price hit, "because disaster."

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petilon
Satya Nadella is doing a terrific job leading Microsoft. Prior to his taking
over, Microsoft was seen as a has-been. Today Microsoft is the most valuable
company in the world once again (edit: AAPL is slightly ahead).

Nevertheless, this is a sad day. If anyone has the ability--and credibility--
to provide guidance to Nadella it is Bill Gates. With Gates gone (and Ballmer
too) it is Nadella's Microsoft. That's not bad necessarily, but having Gates
around as a backup was a good thing.

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aluminussoma
This is the end of an era. I can only imagine what those board meetings are
like. If anything like his product reviews, he asked incisive, aggressive
questions.

I hope he left because he is satisfied with the job the rest of the board is
doing. Yes, Microsoft caused a lot of damage during the monopoly days. The
tech industry needs a healthy, competitive Microsoft - at the very least to
keep a check on other companies.

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forkexec
It seems like he's laser-focused on global health at the B&MGF with some
occasional videos about books, tech and trends. Corporate governance may seem
to him less interesting at this stage.

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pdq
Does this let Bill sell stock without needing to file SEC disclosures?

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wombat-man
I think if you own a certain percentage of total equity you still need to file
disclosures.

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dehrmann
But after a year or two, it does mean he's no longer an insider.

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tus88
Surprised he was even on it still...

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thulecitizen
The patent king is stepping down from his empire

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dcolkitt
The optimist in me wants to believe that this means he's about to be appointed
as the head of the national coronavirus response.

There's probably no better qualified person in the world to manage the
coordinated effort.

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robertfw
Why on earth would he be the most qualified person for that?

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tuna-piano
1\. Bill Gates is extremely competitive, he's a bulldog, he fights and wants
to win against whatever. He built Microsoft into a Monopoly and is fighting
hard (and doing a great job) against diseases.

2\. Bill Gates looks at problems logically, finds missing links, and solves
those links. Whether that is refrigeration for vaccines, getting useful data
for diseases, etc.

3\. Bill Gates knows a ton about diseases, epidemics, etc. He's super curious
and doesn't stop learning.

Who could be more qualified for the job?

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dave5104
Maybe someone with a medical degree?

Gates can certainly bring some unique skills to the table if he was invited,
but it seems like we should have an actual doctor leading the charge.

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kube-system
MDs are good at treating patients, but they're not necessarily good at leading
people.

Good leaders know how to draw on the expertise of others to organize a
coordinated response... which the Gates Foundation has proved themselves very
capable of doing, particularly with public health issues. The Gates Foundation
employs lots of healthcare professionals.

I'd highly suggest looking up some of the talks Gates has done about his work
with his foundation. He definitely has his shit together.

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cpascal
Spot on.

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zozbot234
Bill Gates got his start at Micro-Soft coding BASIC dev stacks for the
microcomputers of his day-- and Microsoft has now announced that further
development on Visual Basic is to be frozen indefinitely
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22570684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22570684)
\- "Going forward, we do not plan to evolve Visual Basic as a language").
There's no way that this is mere coincidence.

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nomel
Or, it could be that

> Bill Gates stepped down from the company's Board of Directors to dedicate
> more time to his philanthropic priorities including global health,
> development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate
> change.

If you follow Bill Gates at all, you'll understand this is where all of his
energy, and passion, have been going for a long while now.

