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Last of Steve Ballmer's old guard heads for the exit Kevin Turner’s departure as Microsoft’s chief salesman after 11 years marks the final passing of the Redmond old guard. Chief operating officer Turner - KT, as he was known - was a chief of the old-school corporate kind; sales, marketing and Microsoft’s stores all reported into Turner. His departure is part of a massive sales shake up that is doing away with the COO’s role. Judson Althoff, who was president of North America sales is now executive vice president of worldwide commercial sales, and the former head of sales and...

... In his first interview since Blake Griffin punched out the team's assistant equipment manager, the Clippers owner [Steve Ballmer] sounded as if he was prepared to discipline his All-Star forward. Asked Wednesday night if he felt it necessary for the Clippers to take the kind of action that would represent what they stand for, Ballmer didn't hesitate. "There need to be consequences," he said. "It's the right thing to do." ...

On Thursday, February 4, Satya Nadella will celebrate his second anniversary as the CEO of Microsoft. It's been an eventful couple of years. Microsoft has grown its crucial cloud business, released Windows 10 to a much better reception than its loathed predecessor, launched a bunch of great apps for iPhone and Android, and generally made people like it a lot more. But the real victory of Satya Nadella — the truly monumental shift — has been within the company. Under Nadella, Microsoft is pointed in one direction for first time in modern memory.

Businessman and Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is known for his passionate outbursts in all spheres of his life, including the success of his team. So after last night’s incredibly exciting buzzer-beating game-winning shot by the Clippers’ Chris Paul, he Ballmered out all over the place – surprising no one, but delighting everyone (except for Spurs fans).You can’t really blame Steve Ballmer for reacting as he did. Even fans who don’t have any financial interest in the LA Clippers were probably losing their minds after Chris Paul took the game away from the Spurs with just a single second...

Steve Ballmer paid $2 billion for the Los Angeles Clippers. But a new report from the Financial Times said he might get about half of what he paid back in the form of tax benefits over the next 15 years.Ballmer's purchase was a record for NBA franchises, coming at nearly four times the next-highest amount ever paid for an NBA team.But the FT found that using a goodwill tax exemption allowed for sports teams, Ballmer could get back $1 billion in taxes.Here's how the FT lays it out:Under an exception in US law, buyers of sports franchises can use...

LOS ANGELES -- There's only one place to correctly start this column and that's with the scene because it was, honestly, something to be seen. Steve Ballmer officially arrived here Monday -- showing up several weeks after his reputation did, Ballmer's reputation being that, as a public speaker, he's passionate, motivating and spirited. Or, said another way, he's as outrageous as someone who has had one too many drinks or one too few meds.

Steve Ballmer is fired up about owning the Clippers. When Steve Ballmer agreed to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers for a reported $2 billion, many felt he was overpaying for the franchise simply because the team was a toy he wanted and he was willing to pay whatever it took to make that happen.When comparing the sale price to the team's revenues and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), it does appear that Ballmer's bid was completely out of whack with what others have paid for NBA teams in recent years.Ballmer addressed this issue on "The Dan...

Steve Ballmer officially became the new owner of the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday. The team said the sale closed after a California court confirmed the authority of Shelly Sterling, on behalf of the Sterling Family Trust, to sell the franchise to the former Microsoft CEO. Her estranged husband, Donald Sterling, had unsuccessfully fought the sale of the team he owned since 1981 in court.

A fresh cash infusion of $250,00 from ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and wife Connie has swelled the pro-Initiative 594 Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility warchest to $3.4 million. The Ballmers gave $125,000 apiece, swelling their total contributions to $600,000. The pro-594 campaign reports more than $1.1 million in cash on hand, according to its filings with the state Public Disclosure Commission. The alliance was formed, largely by faith leaders, after the December 2012, massacre of 20 first graders in Newtown, Connecticut. After the Washington Legislature failed to act, supporters collected signatures to put on the ballot a statewide initiative that...

The best of Steve Ballmer

Before former Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT ) CEO's just-announced deal to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers, the previous record high price for an NBA team was the $550 million paid earlier this month for the Milwaukee Bucks. The amount Ballmer is paying makes it look like former Bucks owner Herb Kohl had his pocket picked by new owners Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry. Yes, Milwaukee is the fifth smallest market in the NBA, but it's hard to imagine that being the second most important team in Los Angeles is actually worth nearly $1.5 billion more. When the Bucks deal was announced...

The U.S. stock market is trading at all-time highs, the yields on U.S. government bonds are at eye-popping lows and the nation’s professional basketball teams are selling for more than most observers previously thought possible. That the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter of the year is the disturbing backdrop for this stunning surge in asset prices—call it the basketball bubble. Forbes first reported early on Thursday that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had submitted a $1.8 billion bid for the Los Angeles Clippers and that the team could go for $2 billion before all was said and done....

I imagine Donald Sterling is going to fight this one too, but… Shelly Sterling has been granted the authority to sell the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers to Steve Ballmer because her husband and co-owner Donald Sterling has been declared mentally incapacitated under the terms of the trust the couple owns the team through. That made her the sole trustee and decision maker. That according to the tapped in Ramona Shelburne of ESPN. There have been reports and rumors that Donald Sterling has been battling dementia, which is the reason his former mistress claimed to make the recordings that sparked the...

That’s $2 billion with an uppercase B! Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has apparently won the bidding war Thursday for the Los Angeles Clippers with a staggering $2 billion offer for the NBA franchise, according to the L.A. Times. The frenzied battle to get the team from Sterling drove the franchise’s price sky high for a team that Forbes estimated was worth at $575 million in January of 2014.

Forbes reports that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who was once part of an unsuccessful bid to acquire the Sacramento Kings and move them to Seattle, has put in a $1.8 billion bid for the Los Angeles Clippers. Reports indicated that Shelly Sterling, who may, or may not have been authoized to sell the team depending on who you talk to, put a 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline on bids to be entered. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has offered $1.8 billion for the Los Angeles Clippers, according to a person familiar with Ballmer's interest in the NBA team. Ballmer, who...

Steve Ballmer has delivered his final interview as Microsoft CEO, talking to long-time Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley. The interview is complimentary, focusing on Ballmer's successes, and cruising past his failures like mobile and tablet computing — the words "iPhone," "iPad," "Android," and "Google" don't appear. But in celebrating Ballmer's success, we see why Microsoft is flailing today. We see why the company wants to hire Alan Mulally, a CEO that is celebrated for his turnaround expertise. It's strange to see a company expected to generate $84 billion in sales for fiscal 2014, a 7.4% annual increase, need a turnaround...

<p>Retirement was not the fate many customers likely would have chosen for Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Something unpleasant involving wolverines would have been more like it—especially if you were among the countless corporate foot soldiers recently required to upgrade an underpowered company-issued laptop to Windows 7 because of Microsoft's withdrawal of support for its long-lived XP.</p>

There were many reasons for the decline of Microsoft under Steve Ballmer, including, as I wrote this morning, its lack of focus and its habit of chasing trends rather than creating them. But one that’s not obvious to outsiders was the company’s employee evaluation system, known as “stack ranking.” The system—and its poisonous effects on Microsoft’s corporate culture—was best explained in an outstanding Vanity Fair feature by Kurt Eichenwald last year... So while Google was encouraging its employees to spend 20 percent of their time to work on ideas that excited them personally, Ballmer was inadvertently encouraging his to spend...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Friday that Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer would retire within the next 12 months, once it has selected a successor, sending its shares up almost 9 percent. Ballmer said in a statement that he would have timed his retirement in the middle of Microsoft's announced transformation to a devices and services company. But he said: "We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction." The software company said its board had appointed a special committee to direct the process of appointing a new CEO.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can’t afford to be wrong about Windows 8. On Thursday in New York, Microsoft will unveil a dramatic overhaul of its ubiquitous Windows operating system. If it flops, the failure will reinforce perceptions that Microsoft is falling behind competitors such as Apple, Google and Amazon as its stranglehold on personal computers becomes less relevant in an era of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. If Ballmer is right, Windows 8 will prove that the world’s largest software maker still has the technological chops and marketing muscle to shape the future of computing....