Ballmer Steve (Steve Ballmer)

Ballmer Steve (Steve Ballmer)

Steven Anthony Ballmer, better known simply as Steve Ballmer , is an American businessman who served as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Microsoft from 2000 to 2013.

He is one of the richest inhabitants of the planet. According to the rating of billionaires The World's Billionaires, compiled by Forbes magazine on February 11, 2008 , Ballmer ranks 43rd with a capital of $15 billion. He became the first billionaire in the world to owe his fortune to options received from his employer (Microsoft Corporation), in which he was neither the founder nor a relative of the founder.

Ballmer entered the service Microsoft in 1980 , immediately becoming one of the main managers and a close associate of the founder of the company (Bill GatesBill Gates). He led the development of the first versions of and. operating systems DOS Over the Windows years, he headed several departments, Microsoft including operations, development, operating systems as well as sales and technical support. In July 1998, he was nominated for the presidency. In January 2000, he was appointed to the position of chief executive officer, giving him full responsibility for the management of the corporation.

In August 2013, it was reported that Ballmer would step down within the next 12 months. In the remainder of his term, he will continue to lead the company during the transition period and help find Microsoft a new CEO.

Former head of the American company Microsoft Steve Ballmer resigned from the board of directors in August 2014, finally leaving the corporation. He intends to fully focus on managing the Los Angeles Clippers club of the National Basketball Association (NBA), acquired on August 12, 2014. On August 12, Steve Ballmer became the owner of the NBA club Los Angeles Clippers. The deal was closed after the entry into force of the decision of the California court, which confirmed the right of the wife of the former owner - Donald Sterling Rochelle - to sell the Clippers. According to media reports, the amount paid for the club amounted to about $2 billion. Ballmer's fortune is estimated at $19.3 billion.

Biography

Ballmer's maternal grandfather Shloma Dworkin was born and lived most of his life in the city of Pinsk, Brest Oblast, Belarus. During the First World War, along with thousands of refugees, the Jewish family wandered through the vastness of the Russian Empire. For some time they settled down in the Saratov province, then part of the Dvorkin family returned to Pinsk, Ballmer's uncle built a bakery there. Another part of the family emigrated to the United States.

In 1920, Stephen's mother, Beatrice, was born in Detroit. There she married a native of Switzerland, Fred Ballmer.

Steve Ballmer was born on March 24, 1956 , and grew up in the vicinity of Detroit, Michigan, United States. His father , Frederick Ballmer, emigrated from Switzerland at the age of 23, worked as a manager at Ford Motor. As it turned out later, the will and perseverance of his father greatly influenced Ballmer's character already in his youth.

In 1973 , after graduating from school in Detroit, it became clear to Steve that Harvard Business School would be the best place where he could get the profession of an idol of that time, his father.

The entire period of study at Harvard for a diligent young man was filled not only with an abundance of training sessions and courses. He took an active part in the sports life of the university: he led the football team, published in two local publications - the university's first literary magazine Harvard Advocate and the Harvard Crimson newspaper. With hard work, he earned authority, respect, gradually becoming one of the best students. The result of his dedication was a diploma with honors and a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics. But this was not the only important event that significantly influenced his future life: at Harvard he met Bill Gates, which soon determined his career path.

In 1977 , Stephen graduated from Harvard and chose a job at Procter & Gamble as his immediate prospect, where for the next two years he served as assistant manager for production and sales. The term turned out to be short-lived, because Stephen was used to giving all of himself to the cause, working from the heart and with zeal. He did not observe such a desire among Procter & Gamble employees, therefore he decided to leave the company.

In 1979 , Ballmer attended Stanford Business School. Before classes began, he had a couple of months at his disposal, during which he communicated with Gates. By that time, the young Microsoft company was already a competitive enterprise, but Ballmer had no thoughts about working in it at that time. The decision to study at Stanford was deliberate and firm. That's what he did.

After the first year, Steve seriously started looking for work for the summer. As one of the right options, he considered a vacancy in Ford, where he tried to offer his developments in the field of creating new investment projects. But in 1980, a crisis occurred in the US automotive industry, because the prospect of working for even a large Detroit company, where his father's experience has been calculated for decades, did not promise prospects. In this situation, Bill Gates showed up on time, who needed an employee to be a manager. Here a radical was made, but, as is now well known, a very correct decision by Steve Ballmer: the business school was abandoned and on June 11, 1980 his work began at Microsoft, the staff of which at the time of its adoption included only 23 employees. He was offered a starting salary of $50 thousand a year and part of the company's shares.

In 1998 , Ballmer was promoted to president of Microsoft Corporation.

January 13, 2000 Bill Gates leaves the post of chief executive officer of the corporation and Ballmer comes to his place. Stephen worked for Microsoft the longest, if you do not take Bill Gates himself into account.

On October 25, 2007, Microsoft CEO ventured to the homeland of his ancestors. Stephen came to Pinsk with his sister, in honor of whose 50th anniversary he planned to carry out the journey. The unofficial visit of the Microsoft executive to Belarus lasted only one day, during which Ballmer and his sister managed to visit places related to the Jewish history of Pinsk. In one of the city's Jewish cemeteries, a local historian showed the famous guest the place where his great-grandfather was buried. Steve Ballmer and his sister also visited the building of the bakery, which once belonged to his uncle, visited the Pina synagogue, where they talked with the rabbi and lit candles in memory of the deceased ancestors.

Steve Ballmer keeps 80% of his funds in Microsoft shares.

For more photos from Ballmer's office, see Steve Ballmer's Office.

In May 2011, David Einhorn, head of the influential hedge fund Greenlight Capital, during his speech at the Ira Sohn Conference in New York, stated that Steve Ballmer (Steve Ballmer) should resign from the post of executive director of Microsoft, since it is because of his leadership that the software giant is developing too slowly and losing its position in the American and global IT markets. According to Einhorn, due to the actions of Steve Ballmer as head of the company, Microsoft shares have practically not been growing in price over the past years, and the company did not have time to begin expanding to promising markets for Internet services and mobile computers. Hedge fund Greenlight Capital has long held a significant number of shares in the software giant. To date, the fund owns about 9 million shares of the company, or 0.11% of its total, according to Thomson Reuters.

In August 2013, it became known that Ballmer was leaving the post of head of Microsoft.

Personal qualities

Steve Ballmer was known for demanding employees. The power, discipline and enthusiasm of Steve Ballmer, who has a reputation as a ebullient, purposeful, sincere and dynamic person with a good sense of humor and a great charge of energy, has been passed on to the entire Microsoft team over the years. Steve says: "I want everyone to share my enthusiasm for our products and services. I want people to understand what great opportunities are embedded in our software products that can make business more successful and recreation more eventful and interesting. " He is ready to shout and randomly gesture if it is necessary to recognize his correctness, which always implies the superiority of Microsoft products over others. Steve Ballmer's enthusiasm and leadership was on display vividly in any position he held with the company.

Ballmer was always distinguished by his eccentricity and temper. The latter was confirmed by hundreds of publications on the Internet and the press on the trial of Microsoft and Google: employees of the corporation who chose Google as their new place of work spoke eloquently about Ballmer's incontinence, in connection with which they were forced to dodge flying furniture and listen to comments containing the strongest expressions. All this is then commented on by him as an excessive inflation of the minor incident that happened.

Videos of Steve Ballmer's speeches at corporate events are widespread on the Internet. In the most famous of them, the CEO of Microsoft is nicknamed the "dancing monkey boy": after being presented to the public, his energy and delight swept over the edge. The main face of the company, not caring about reputation, jumped, danced, waved his arms wide and shouted for almost a minute. A few days later, a developer conference was held, at which Ballmer distinguished himself again: the event participants heard an appeal "Developers!" from the head of the company 14 times in a row, while his clothes and expressions completely soaked in sweat depicted a frantic desire to be heard and understood.

Competitors Microsoft have had to blush and restrain emotions more than a dozen times in response to sharp remarks from the CEO: Microsoft shameful comparisons, outright threats - all this rushes out of their mouths with enviable abundance. So, the free distribution operating system Linux was called "a cancer that destroys intellectual property in everything it touches," it was also "the feature of communism for which it is so much loved." Aggressive, but legitimate (sometimes the border already seems crossed) actions are taken even more often by Ballmer. Many executives of rival and partner companies note that the corporation's creator Bill Gates is distinguished by striking stubbornness, perseverance and unwavering in his decisions, which sometimes causes unpleasant bewilderment, feelings of powerlessness or anger. But compared to the assistant, he does not seem like one at all: often Ballmer demonstrates manifestations of incredible greed and irrepressible arrogance.

State

2015: $22.7 billion - Forbes

On August 5, 2015, the authoritative magazine Forbes published a rating of the most affluent industry figures. information technology Steve Ballmer's fortune was estimated at $22.7 billion. More. here

2016: $27.7 billion - Forbes

In August 2016, Forbes magazine presented a rating of the richest businessmen in the field of information technology (IT). Steve Ballmer's fortune was estimated at $27.7 billion. Read more here.

2021: Net worth $101 billion

In early July 2021, the fortune of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reached $101 billion, which allowed him to become the ninth person in the world whose capital reached $100 billion. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is also close to the group of these entrepreneurs.

According to Bloomberg, Steve Ballmer's fortune increased by $731 million per day, to $101 billion. He was CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014, now the businessman owns the Los Angeles Clippers basketball club.

The tenth person with a fortune of more than $100 billion was almost one of the founders of Oracle Larry Ellison. His fortune grew by $2.24 billion, reaching $98.6 billion.

The fortune of ex-head of Microsoft Steve Ballmer reached $101 billion

The first position of the rating is still occupied by the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos with a fortune of $212 billion, in second place is the head of Tesla Elon Musk ($177 billion), in third position is the president of LVMHBernar Arnault ($169 billion). In fourth position is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose fortune is estimated at $148 billion, and on the fifth line is the head of Facebook with a fortune of $130 billion.

In sixth and seventh place are the founders of AlphabetLarry Page and Sergey Brin - $115 billion and $111 billion, respectively. Eighth place was taken by American investor Warren Buffett with a fortune of $101 billion.

Steve Ballmer acquired the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team in 2014, and thanks to his rise to $101 billion, he regained the title of the world's richest sports club owner. The size of Ballmer's fortune was affected by an increase in the value of Microsoft shares. In June 2020, Microsoft became the second company registered on the US exchange with an estimate of $2 trillion. The technology corporation is second only to Apple, during 2020 the company's shares rose 25%, ahead of competitors Apple and Amazon in terms of dynamics.^[1]

2022: Net worth - $87 billion; 7th in the Bloomberg ranking

In December 2022, in the ranking of the richest people on the planet Bloomberg, Steve Ballmer took 7th place with a fortune of $87 billion. Read more here.

Family

The company Microsoft determined not only Ballmer's future career, but also his personal life. He married Connie Snyder, who worked for a public relations agency. Microsoft It was this woman who became the mother of his three children.

Steve Ballmer with his wife at a reception at the White House in honor of the President of China, January 19, 2011

Interesting facts

• Steve Ballmer plays Halo on the Xbox console. Halo is an FPS computer game developed by Bungie and released in 2001 by Microsoft. It was originally released for the Xbox game console.

Links

• Steve Ballmer is a Microsoft star of the first magnitude
• Biography of Steve Ballmer
• Ballmer's presentation of the Windows 1.0 operating system
• The performance, after which Ballmer was nicknamed the "dancing monkey"
• Microsoft Website Page

Notes