Executive Steve Ballmer disclosed he would step aside.
Announced just ahead of the Labor Day weekend, Microsoft said it would appoint a director from ValueAct Capital Management LP early next year. It would be the first time the company had ever appointed a director not solely at its discretion.
Mr. Ballmer and other Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) officials have said ValueAct's pressure played no role in last week's surprise announcement about his retirement. A ValueAct official has said the same thing in at least one private conversation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Still, the decision to add an investor who owns less than 1% of the company shows the pressure that Microsoft faces. The company has faced widespread criticism for missing several waves of consumer technology, from mobile devices to Internet search.
(Too bad ValueAct wasn’t able to stop the boneheaded Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V deal – mark my words, this will prove to be as bad as HP’s acquisition of Palm – and this deal is more than 7x the size!)
7) The latest Barron’s ran a nice feature with an excerpt from the new book I co-authored, The Art of Value Investing: How the World's Best Investors Beat the Market (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/
