Elop Favored By Gamblers As Microsoft's Next Chief Executive 196
PolygamousRanchKid writes "A gambling website's favorite as Microsoft Corp.'s next chief executive officer is Stephen Elop, the Nokia CEO who has presided over a 62 percent decline in market value. Elop, a former Microsoft executive, has 5-to-1 odds to be hired as Steve Ballmer's replacement, according to Ladbrokes, the U.K.-based gambling operator. He leads a pool including internal candidates Kevin Turner and Julie Larson-Green and outsiders like Apple CEO Tim Cook — a 100-to-1 dark horse."
Re:Wouldn't it be funny (Score:3, Informative)
H-1B1 only applies to Chilean and Singaporean nationals. Since he's Canadian, they can just list him as "computer analyst" and he can work in the US under TN status for a period of 1 year, renewable indefinitely.
Re:Name game (Score:5, Informative)
Shareholders judge CEOs according to how stock prices have moved and how dividends have been released. These are usually the guys you have to please, over the term of a couple of years, to keep your job.
An objective observer would more likely judge a CEO by the stability and growth of the company over the course of half a decade or more. It's not always about the money. Some great private company owners don't care much about bringing in a corporate profit, but rather they just like what they're doing and want to pay their employees and the bills. (But of course, once you hold a majority share in a company that is worth billions of dollars, it becomes VERY hard to resist an IPO.)
There's also a big difference between a startup that is still on its way up vs. an established company. A company with its roots firmly planted, in my opinion, should value a CEO with the ability to continue pushing the company forward when market conditions provide overbearing competition and when economic times do not play well to the good or service being provided. Sometimes this means reducing cash in the bank and moving fiercely into related markets that are on the upswing.