Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's pay package tops $80 million with big stock awards

Reuters | 21 Oct, 2014, 07.04AM IST 

SEATTLE: Microsoft Corp's new Chief Executive Satya Nadella has become one the technology industry's biggest earners, with a total compensation package worth $84.3 million this year, according to a document filed with securities regulators on Monday. 

The outsize number is mostly made up of the estimated value of certain one-time stock awards given to Nadella, who became the company's third CEO in February. Most of it Nadella cannot actually receive until 2019. 

The massive stock awards, valued at $79.8 million overall, were designed to keep Nadella at Microsoft while the company was hunting for a new CEO and to give him long-term incentives as CEO. 

Large stock awards have not been necessary for Microsoft's previous two CEOs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, as both had multi-billion dollar holdings in the company. Microsoft is also slightly hampered in ensuring the loyalty of its top executives as none of them have employment contracts with the company. 

Disclosure of Nadella's rich pay package comes at an awkward time for the new CEO, just 11 days after he urged women in technology not to ask for pay raises but trust in "karma" to get a fair salary. Nadella earlier on Monday said men and women are paid equally at Microsoft. 

According to Microsoft's proxy statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Nadella is slated to receive stock worth an estimated $59.2 million under a long-term incentive scheme that stretches out over seven years and is dependent on Microsoft's shares beating the Standard & Poor's 500 index. He got a further award worth $13.5 million to stay at the company while it was searching for its next CEO. 

Excluding those one-time stock awards, Nadella's pay package totaled $11.6 million this year, including $918,000 in salary, a $3.6 million cash bonus, and an annual stock award valued at just over $7 million. 

Nadella was not the only executive to benefit from the uncertainty at Microsoft between August last year and February, as the company looked for its next CEO. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner was awarded shares valued at $10 million and head lawyer Brad Smith was awarded $9.6 million worth. 

In the future, Nadella's compensation is set to be more modest, with "total target compensation" for fiscal 2015 set at $18 million, according to the company's proxy filing. That includes a base salary of $1.2 million, a maximum cash bonus of three times his salary, plus shares worth $13.2 million.

Microsoft Has A New CFO: Amy Hood

Microsoft has named its new CFO, Amy Hood, who was formerly the top financial officer of the Microsoft Business Division
Last month, Peter Klein announced he was leaving at the end of June after 3-1/2 years.

Here's the press release:

REDMOND, Wash., May 8, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- 

   Microsoft Corp. today announced that Amy Hood was named Microsoft chief financial officer, succeeding outgoing CFO Peter Klein who will remain at Microsoft through the end of June to ensure a smooth transition. Hood becomes CFO effective immediately.

"Amy brings the right talents and experiences to the role as we continue to strengthen our focus on devices and services," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer. "She has been an instrumental leader in the Microsoft Business Division (MBD), helping lead the transition to services with Office 365 and delivering strong financial and operational management throughout her time on the business."

Hood, 41, joined Microsoft in December 2002 and currently serves as CFO of MBD, overseeing all financial strategy, management and reporting for the $24.1 billion business. During her time as CFO of MBD, Hood was also deeply involved in the strategy development and overall execution of the company's successful acquisitions of Skype and Yammer. Previously, Hood served as chief of staff in the Server and Tools group, then ran the strategy and business development team in MBD before becoming CFO of the division in January 2010.

"I'm excited to step into this role and look forward to working closely again with our investors and shareholders," Hood said. "Peter has built a world-class finance team, and I am set up well to continue the company's strong discipline around costs and focus on driving shareholder value."

Before joining Microsoft as a part of the investor relations group, she worked at Goldman Sachs in various roles including investment banking and capital markets groups. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Duke University and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard University.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

Microsoft ends Windows XP support one year from today; is the world ready?

Source: Telegraph | 365 Image via Shutterstock: April 8,2013

The official end of Microsoft's support for Windows XP is coming in a year, an event that Microsoft has been reminding the world is coming for some time, especially businesses. The OS launched on October 25, 2001, over 11 years ago, but Microsoft has insisted that one year from now, on April 8, 2014, Windows XP will get no software updates or bug fixes.

Yet, even with this deadline looming, there are still a lot of PCs out there that are running this OS, long after Microsoft launched three major Windows updates (Windows Vista in 2007, Windows 7 in 2009 and Windows 8 in 2012). The latest numbers from Net Applications from March 2013 show that Windows XP is still installed on 38.73 percent of all PCs worldwide.

While it's true that Windows XP has been in decline in terms of its worldwide market share for some time, it's looking like that when April 8, 2014 arrives, many large businesses won't have updated their PCs to Windows 7 or Windows 8. The Telegraph reports that, according to a survey from software management company Camwood, less than half of all large businesses have even started the upgrade process from Windows XP to at least Windows 7.

Camwood suggests that these large organizations don't want to spend a lot of money to update their PCs under the current economic conditions. Those same businesses also feel that Windows XP still works well for them. Yet, if Microsoft sticks to its current deadline for ending support, that will leave those businesses open to security risks because of the lack of software updates for Windows XP.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft continues to stick to its guns and cut off Windows XP support one year from now or if it might add a few more months to the life of Windows XP to help those businesses to make the transition to Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Microsoft proposes over Rs 5 lakh fee for new category of H-1B visa

Oct 1, 2012, 01.48PM IST PTI

WASHINGTON: In a proposal that will hit Indian IT companies the most, US software giant Microsoft Corporation has suggested a whopping fee of $10,000 (over Rs 5 lakh) for a new category of H-1B visas and $15,000 (more than Rs 7.5 lakh) for permanent residency or Green Card.

This could raise a huge $5 billion over a decade, it said.

Both the new categories of H-1B and Green Cards, according to the Microsoft plan, would have an annual capacity of 20,000 and would be restricted to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

The money thus raised, according to the US company, would be used for the STEM education programmes.

Given that Indian techies grab the maximum number of H-1B visas, such a proposal if accepted by the Congress would hit the Indian IT companies the most.

Such a proposal from Microsoft comes at a time when the visiting External Affairs Minister, SM Krishna, is expected to raise the issue of increase in H-1B visas last year in his meeting with the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in New York early this week.

The proposal was revealed at a Washington-based think-tank gathering last week by Brad Smith, general counsel & executive vice president, legal & corporate Affairs, of Microsoft.

He said the money thus raised would be used to generate the necessary skilled manpower in the coming years.

Microsoft currently has an opening of 6,000 jobs in the country, of which more than 3,400 jobs are for researchers, developers and engineers.

"Too few American students -- especially students who have historically been underserved and underrepresented -- are achieving the levels of education required to secure jobs in innovation-based industries," he said in his remarks to the Brookings Institute, an eminent American think tank.

"An effective national talent strategy therefore needs to combine long-term improvements in STEM education in the United States with targeted, short-term, high-skilled immigration reforms.

"If done right, the latter can help fund the former, and our white paper outlines specific recommendations," he said.

Microsoft, he said, believes this initiative should include, among other things, funding for states to strengthen K-12 STEM education.

This is by providing additional resources to recruit and train STEM teachers, broaden access to computer science in high school and expand higher education capacity to produce more STEM degrees.

In his speech, Smith said Congress should create a new, supplemental category with 20,000 visas annually for STEM skills that are in short supply.

"In addition, Congress should take advantage of prior unused green cards by making a supplemental allocation of 20,000 new green card slots for workers with STEM skills, Smith said.

Simultaneously, Microsoft released "A National Talent Strategy" policy paper with details of its proposals.

"To provide employers with immediate access to the highly talented STEM professionals that their businesses need, a new allocation of 20,000 H-1B visas for foreign nationals with a US bachelor's degree or equivalent foreign degree in a STEM discipline should be established," said the 32-page policy paper.

To qualify for these visas, it said, employers would be required to make an investment of $ 10,000 toward the development of future American STEM workers for each visa sought from the new allocation.

According to the policy paper, Microsoft conceded, this proposal will not solve the broad shortage of H-1B visas overall, given the stark disparity between the current supply of H-1B visas and the demand for skilled workers -- particularly during periods of economic growth.

"But it will make an appreciable impact in addressing the talent crisis many businesses face today due to the shortage of high skilled STEM workers," it said.

"In addition to improving the ability of private-sector employers to meet their STEM-based workforce needs, full utilisation of this new allocation of visas would generate $ 200 million in investments for the American STEM pipeline annually.

"The incentive of immediate visa availability for STEM professionals would also connect participating employers' staffing strategies today directly to the effort to rebuild the American STEM pipeline for tomorrow," it added.

Microsoft recommends recapturing 20,000 unused employment based green card numbers annually to reduce the green card backlog and generate up to $300 million per annum for new investments in the American STEM pipeline.

This would help address the backlog and enable employers to retain targeted high-skilled foreign workers and attract the best and brightest from around the world.

"To qualify for these green card numbers, employers would invest $ 15,000 for the development of future American STEM workers for each green card number made available through recapture", the policy paper said.

The green card numbers should be assignable only to employees who already have an approved PERM labor certification and/ or I-140 immigrant visa petition, making them eligible for immediate processing of their green card applications, it said.

"Based on our own analysis, we believe that it would be fair and feasible to require an investment of $ 10,000 for each of these new STEM visas and $ 15,000 for each of these new STEM green cards.

"This would raise up to $ 500 million per year - or $ 5 billion over a decade -- that the federal government could use to distribute to the states where STEM education investments are needed, ' Microsoft said.

Microsoft launches Web browser IE9

Source:San Francisco: Financial express :agencies :Saturday, Sep 18, 2010 

 Microsoft Corp released the latest version of its Web browser, saying that it would work at faster speeds, deliver better graphics and be less obtrusive to users.

Internet Explorer 9, unlike previous versions and many competing browsers, pushes itself into the background.

"People go to the Web for site, not the browser," said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for IE, at a press event in San Francisco. "Today Web sites are boxed in, the box is the browser."

IE9 is available in a public beta, or trial version, in more than 30 languages.

 Many of the world's most popular sites including Facebook, Amazon.com, Time Warner Inc's CNN, eBay and Twitter are taking advantage of IE9's new features.

The browser has become one of the most important programs on a PC. As people watch more video and use sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, browser makers are making their latest versions quicker and better at handling graphics.

Microsoft is promising a faster, cleaner, more secure version of its browser, one that will support evolving Web technologies, such HTML5, a standard for presenting content.

It is also more tightly integrated with the company's Bing search engine, which the company hopes will begin to eat away at the dominance of Google.

In IE9, the rendering of graphics and text has shifted to the graphics card from the CPU, accelerating speed and visuals. As a result, Microsoft said sites will look and perform more like applications that are installed directly on a PC.

IE9's tight integration with Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs on most of the world's PCs, enables IE9 to use a computer's hardware in a way that rival browsers cannot, said Forrester Research analyst Peter O'Neill.

"This is going to make the Windows platform more attractive, and Microsoft hopes, help stop people from leaking away to other browsers," he said.

IE has been the market leader for many years, but has been losing share to Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome.

IE had 51 percent of the worldwide browser market last month, according to StatCounter, compared to Firefox's 31 percent and Chrome's 11 percent. Apple Inc's Safari and Opera Software's browser had about 4 percent and 2 percent.

Microsoft adds new Hotmail tools, features to take on Yahoo, Gmail

SOURCE :AFP, May 18, 2010, 11.41pm IST
WASHINGTON: Hotmail is getting a facelift.

Microsoft's free email service, the world's largest with 360 million users, is adding a slew of new tools and features including the ability to send larger attachments and exchange instant messages and view Web content in the Hotmail inbox.

"You don't have to worry about attachment size anymore," said Walter Harp, director of product management for Windows Live.

Hotmail previously restricted attachment size to 10 megabytes but "with the new Hotmail we're going to up the ante by allowing you to send up to 10 gigabytes in a single message," Harp said.

The way it works, he told AFP, is by uploading documents or photos to Microsoft's SkyDrive, a free service which allows for up to 25 gigabytes of online storage.

"The email recipient gets a link to SkyDrive and can view the photos or download the photos," Harp said. "Or if it's a link to a document, they can open up that document using the free Web-based version of Microsoft Office, view it and edit it."

Files can still be sent as traditional attachments to an email if a Hotmail user prefers and the size limit has been increased from 10 megabytes to 25 megabytes, the same as Google's Gmail, Harp said.

The new features, which will be rolled out to users in July and August, include adding instant messaging in the inbox. "Right next to your inbox you can see your buddies, see if they're online, and send them instant messages," Harp said.

Another feature designed to "help people stay in their inbox" is called "active views" and gives users the ability to view Web content in their inbox instead of in a separate Web browser window.

"Ninety percent of the mail that comes into Hotmail contains a link and these links ask you or require you to leave your inbox," Harp said. "That's a lot of hopping out of your inbox.

"There's a space at the top of your email and you can interact with other websites without having to go to them," he said. "If you get photos sent to you from Flickr, you don't have to go to Flickr, you can see them right in your inbox.

"If you get a video from YouTube or Hulu you don't have to go to those websites, you can click and watch it right there in your inbox."

Another new tool called "1-click filters" allows users to "cut through the clutter" and organize messages according to sender or subject, Harp said.

"One click gets you to mail just from your contacts," he said. "Another click gets you to mail from your social networks whether it's Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, all in one place."

A new security feature allows Hotmail users to receive a single use password by SMS text message for use on a public computer. "If you're nervous about malware being on public computers you can use this one-time code," Harp said.

Harp also said Hotmail had made great strides fighting spam. "In 2006, 35 percent of the average Hotmail inbox was spam," he said. "We've got that number down to four percent."

He said Hotmail currently receives eight billion messages a day with users sharing 1.5 billion photos per month and 350 million Office documents per month.

Hotmail had 359.9 million users as of March 2010, according to online tracking firm comScore. Yahoo! Mail was the next largest email provider with 283.6 million users followed by Google's Gmail with 173 million users.