Three of the top 20 investors in Microsoft are lobbying the board to urge chairman Bill Gates to quit the firm he co-founded 38 years ago.
However, there has been no sign that Microsoft’s board would agree with the investors, who together hold around 5% of the company’s stock, Reuters reported, citing unidentified sources familiar with matter.
The three investors are worried that Bill Gates’ role as chairman would block the implementation of new schemes, while also limiting the power of a new chief executive to make substantial changes.
Investors are mainly concerned about Gates’ role on the special committee tasked with finding current CEO Steve Ballmer‘s successor, as well as his use of power out of proportion to his plummeting shareholding.
The Microsoft chairman earlier ageed to sell about 80m company shares as part of a scheme, which if left to continue could leave himwith no share in the firm in five years’ time.
In 2000, Gates handed the CEO role to Steve Ballmer, to focus on his charitable work with the $38bn Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Recently, personal details of Gates were stolen from US data brokers, which also involved other high profile faces including First Lady Michelle Obama, as well as celebrities Beyonce Knowles, Jay-Z and Ashton Kutcher.
