Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO who stayed at the helm of the software giant for about 13 years, said in a new interview that he recommended and Bill Gates recommended Satya Nadella for CEO position. Ballmer adds that he’s not surprised Nadella is doing a great job.
“He’s the recommendation I made,” Ballmer said in a recent interview with Bloomberg’s David Rubinstein. “He’s the recommendation that Bill Gates made. I thought he was a candidate to replace me, which is why we moved him into his last job, which was running one of the big divisions. And I was glad he got the job, because he’s done a great job.”
“He’s done a good job of repositioning the company in investors’ minds,” he added.
Microsoft’s market value has reached $800 billion this month and it’s expected to improve as the Redmond-based tech giant will announce its financial results later today. It’s likely that the shares will be setting a new all-time high record.
“We started this thing called Azure and Office 365, and my successor Satya has taken the thing to very much new heights,” Ballmer said who’s Microsoft’s biggest shareholder. “The only change to reposition the company really came when Satya started.”
