Maybe Mulally Is Going to Microsoft

Microsoft ($MSFT) has been doing well lately and Ford ($F) hasn’t. Apparently, there’s an obvious connection: speculation that Ford CEO Alan Mulally will depart the automaker for the top spot at MSFT.

I’ve been a doubter on that story, but it got a major boost today when Rick Sherlund, an influential analyst at Nomura, said it’s likely.

From Jay Yarow at Business Insider (h/t @soonerstocks):

Inside Microsoft, Sherlund is well-respected as one of the few analysts that really understands the company.

In his report today, he says it’s likely that Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford, will be named as Microsoft’s CEO by December.

While internal candidates like Stephen Elop and Tony Bates are being kicked around, Sherlund says he does not believe they are seriously in the running.

He says other top candidates likely include Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr. and ex-Motorola COO Edward Breen. Those are two names we’ve never heard before.

Additionally, he reports Microsoft has been trying to woo Paul Martiz, a former Microsoft employee who was running VMWare.

Sherlund says Mulally/Maritz would be a dream team. Maritz would be Microsoft’s head of software/products and Mulally as CEO/operator. If it helps, think of Tim Cook and Jony Ive. A similar division between operator and visionary.

Furthermore, Sherlund thinks MSFT should sell off Bing and Xbox, buy out Ballmer’s stock for $12 billion, and finally:

Build out Azure, the cloud platform that rivals Amazon.

Make sure its enterprise software works across platforms. Office needs to work on Android and iOS to compete with Google’s apps which are growing.

Skype and Yammer are not being taking advantage of. Microsoft should do more with both.

Posted by on November 6th, 2013 at 3:29 pm


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