Nadella appointed Microsoft Chairman

MICROSOFT has appointed CEO Satya Nadella as Chairman of the tech giant, a first in two decades when Microsoft's chairman will also be its CEO.

Bill Gates was the only other Chairman and CEO of Microsoft who stepped down as CEO in 2000.

Gates stepped down as chairman in 2014 and the board then elected John Thompson as independent chairman.

Gates left the Microsoft board entirely last year to pursue his philanthropic ambitions.

In this role as Chairman, Nadella will lead the work to set the agenda for the board, leveraging his deep understanding of the business to elevate the right strategic opportunities and identify key risks and mitigation approaches for the board's review, the company said in a statement late on Wednesday. Microsoft also unanimously elected John Thompson as lead independent director, a role he held previously from 2012 to 2014.

As lead independent director, Thompson will retain significant authority including providing input on behalf of the independent directors on board agendas, calling meetings of the independent directors, setting agendas for executive sessions, and leading performance evaluations of the CEO, Microsoft said.

Born in Hyderabad, Nadella earned bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka.

On February 4, 2014, he was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft, the third CEO in the company's history following Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Under Nadella's leadership, Microsoft has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, riding on its growing Azure Cloud, Microsoft 365 and enterprise communication businesses (including Microsoft Teams).

Microsoft reported a strong growth of $41.7 billion in sales (up 19 per cent year-over-year) and $15.5 billion in net income for the quarter ended March 31, 2021. The biggest growth engine was its Azure Cloud division that saw $15.1 billion in revenue, a 23 per cent year-over-year increase. "Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren't slowing down. They're accelerating, and it's just the beginning. We are building the cloud for the next decade, expanding our addressable market and innovating across every layer of the tech stack to help our customers be resilient and transform," Nadella had said recently. Driven by online work and learning amid the ongoing pandemic, Microsoft Teams now have 145 million daily active users globally, almost double the numbers a year ago