Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Buys the LA Clippers For $2 Billion 270
DroidJason1 (3589319) writes "Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has purchased the LA Clippers for a whopping $2 billion, also setting a new record price for an NBA team. This deal is apparently tentative until Donald Sterling gives his blessing. Twenty-nine other NBA owners need to offer their approval as well, but that shouldn't be a problem as long as Ballmer reaffirms his commitment of keeping the Clippers in Los Angeles. Interestingly, Donald Sterling had purchased the team back in June of 1981 for $12.5 million." We talked about this earlier in the week when rumors of the purchase started circulating.
Re:Oh No! (Score:4, Informative)
Bobby Knight beat him to it, long ago.
(Wow.. I couldn't remember his name, and googling "chair throwing coach" found it immediately. We live in a wonderful time.)
Re:Instead of a new TV I guess (Score:4, Informative)
He wasn't a CEO as much as he was a co-founder of one of the biggest Tech Goldmines ever.
So yeah, for him spending 2 Billion on a sports team is like you and I going out and buying a new Porsche.
Re:Instead of a new TV I guess (Score:5, Informative)
Just as long as you don't compare his performance to that of Apple, Google, or Facebook and completely ignore the failures in the longhorn, vista, windows Mobile, windows tablet, MS hailstorm, MSN Live, Bing, windows RT, Surface, Windows 8 and the decline of the PC form factor. Then yeah, he did great.
Re:Instead of a new TV I guess (Score:5, Informative)
Given the dotcom bubble I thought it would be unfair too. But if you look at just large cap tech, it's nowhere near as bad as what happened to the pure-play dotcoms and networkers:
Over the same time frame:
Oracle: $86B -> $185B
Apple: $18B -> $547B
HP: $45B -> $64B
And of course IPOs that happened a couple years later like Google and Salesforce were multi-baggers.
So comparing the peak mkt cap of the bubble is actually not that unfair. Considering Microsoft had a monopoly in 2000 and couldn't even maintain a constant enterprise value over 14 years, again, I wouldn't call that a "wildly successful" performance by the CEO.