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Microsoft The Almighty Buck

Steve Ballmer Surpasses Bill Gates In Wealth (neowin.net) 55

Posted by BeauHD from the rich-getting-richer dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Neowin: Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, known for his enthusiastic energy and salesmanship, is now richer than Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. This is the first time Ballmer has surpassed Bill Gates in wealth. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Steve Ballmer is now the sixth-richest person in the world with a $157.2 billion net worth.

Steve Ballmer surpassed Bill Gates for two reasons: - Ninety percent of Steve Ballmer's wealth is in Microsoft stock. Ballmer remains the single largest individual shareholder of Microsoft stock. Microsoft's stock continues its strong growth momentum and is up 21% this year alone.
- Bill Gates diversified his portfolio through Cascade Investment. Therefore, his other investments did not yield the returns that Microsoft stock would have provided. "[T]he Bloomberg Billionaires Index only considers an individual's current personal wealth," notes the report. It doesn't take into consideration each of the executives' various charitable donations, such as Gates' $60 billion donation to the Gates Foundation or Ballmer's million-dollar donations to major universities in the U.S.
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Steve Ballmer Surpasses Bill Gates In Wealth More

Steve Ballmer Surpasses Bill Gates In Wealth

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  • I too have consistently outperformed the market by remaining heavily invested in MSFT.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      It's hard to go wrong by investing in defense contractors who also have a monopoly position. (According to the US DoJ, Microsoft does.)

      • The 5 year return on Boeing stands at -48.71%

      • Re:I too (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @08:57AM (#64597373)

        Sometimes I forget how much bigger the tech firms are compared to the military-industrial-complex, at least by market cap.

        Boeing: $113B
        Raytheon: $134B
        Lockheed: $112B
        Northrop: $65B
        General Dymanics: $79B

        Total: $503B

        Microsoft: $3.4T
        Apple: $3.4T
        Alphabet: $2.3T
        Meta: $1.3T
        Amazon: $2.1T

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          MSFT belongs in the first category.

          • they all do. making death machines is so 20th century (not to diminish its importance, we want those death machines!); the hot new field is domestic surveillance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      I too have consistently outperformed the market by remaining heavily invested in MSFT.

      I guess it's the perfect time for you and Steeve Balmer to diversify then.

      • I'm already diversified into ETFs and commodities. MSFT just represents most of my single company stock holdings, alongside a smaller chunk of NFLX.

  • The big reason (Score:5, Informative)

    by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @08:22AM (#64597269)

    >>Steve Ballmer surpassed Bill Gates for two reasons:

    I think the biggest reason is not mentioned. Bill was recently divorced and Melinda ended up with $2 billion in stock and assets.

    • $2bil is barely a drop of piss in the ocean of Bill Gates wealth. Just under 2% of Bill Gates net worth.

    • Melinda Gates is also on the list, with $13.3 billion net worth.

    • Re:The big reason (Score:5, Informative)

      by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @08:40AM (#64597313)

      That's a pretty minimal change at those levels of wealth. The major reason why he managed to pass Gates is because a decade or so ago they dumped something like a third of all their wealth into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the years.

    • >>Steve Ballmer surpassed Bill Gates for two reasons:

      I think the biggest reason is not mentioned. Bill was recently divorced and Melinda ended up with $2 billion in stock and assets.

      Divorce Attorneys! Divorce Attorneys! Divorce Attorneys!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      Bill was recently divorced and Melinda ended up with $2 billion in stock and assets

      Bill's net worth would have recovered that amount in under a year.

      This is what really separates the billionaire class from the rest of us. Their wealth begets more wealth more or less automatically. Imagine "earning" a few $billion in one year. That's roughly speaking 100x-10,000x more than us plebians will earn in their entire lifetimes. Bill Gates could literally set $1 million in cash on fire, every day, and still

      • yeah, most people simply don't get it, once you hit $100 million, you have enough that each year you earn millions. Each Year. RDJ has a net worth of about $350 million if I recall correctly. That means he never, ever has to work again, unless he wants to... So, Marvel? it is not that RDJ can command a ridiculous salary (though apparently he can) it is also that he has to WANT to do the project, because he doesn't have to do any work at all, ever, that he doesn't want to do. not like us poor working schlubs

  • Ironically firing him made him a lot wealthier (Score:5, Interesting)

    by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @08:23AM (#64597271)

    Microsoft stock was going nowhere for years with Ballmer in charge. Once they got rid of him it took off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      I sincerely hope that he has had that pointed out to him, and that it eats away at his conscience every single day of the rest of his miserable life.

      • Re:Ironically firing him made him a lot wealthier (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @08:50AM (#64597345)

        i am 100% positive that he doesnt care at all.

        • I know I don't.

        • Cat Lady (Score:5, Interesting)

          by sudonim2 ( 2073156 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @11:24AM (#64597861)

          Here's the thing with people like this: They're just like cat ladies. If you have a cat, then you have a pet. If you have two cats, you like cats and maybe wanted a companion for your pet. If you have three to five cats, you're a cat person; you just really like cats. If you have eighteen cats, you don't like cats. You have a hole right in the core of your soul and you tried to fill it with cats. The first seventeen cat's didn't fill it. I'm betting number eighteen didn't either. There's absolutely no chance the inevitable nineteenth cat will either. But you're just going to keep trying to fill that stubbornly non-cat shaped hole in your soul with more cats until an outside force, usually either the authorities or the fertility-to-mortality rate of cats stops you. Now just replace "cats" with "money" and you understand the abstract, and rather diseased, relationship between ultra-wealthy individuals and their wealth.

          All this is a long way of saying that this news will absolutely eat away at Bill Gates. The fact that he's grown richer because he was removed from power so his failures would stop affecting the bottom line will eat away at Ballmer. The fact that neither are the richest in the world eats away at both. And, as Elon Musk is in the process of demonstrating, even reaching the top of the list with devastate more than anything else as it quickly becomes apparent to them the pyrrhic nature of their victory as their ultimate success turns to ash in their mouths.

          • 100% true! I mean, look at larry ellison, I mean, he had the biggest private yacht in the world, then some saudi prince or something had one made that was maybe an inch bigger, so Larry had to then go get an even bigger one built so that he could still claim to have THE BIGGEST. I am betting he spends less than 5% of his time anywhere near that yacht, but he still has to pay the staff to keep it up and make sure it is ready to go, he still has to pay a boatyard or something money to allow it to stay there.

            • Was it Paul Allen who legit purchased an old Russian diesel sub and had it refitted into a pleasure yacht? Real 100% super villain shit, that.

              Every tech company has the one founder who's a technical wizard who's obviously on the spectrum who becomes CTO and then retires after 15 years and one who's a dead-eyed psychopath with no real technical ability who becomes the CEO and makes the world suffer for allowing them to survive childhood despite all the signs from the gods that they should have been left on

              • Yeah, his doctors told him he needed real medicine and he instead, kept with his crazy diet that is actually part of the reason he died when he did. That is a bad sentence, what I meant to say was that his crazy diet contributed to his developing the cancer that killed him. Iam not opposed to people being vegetarians, far from it, but Job's diet was also far from what vegetarians would accept as vegetarian, as you said, it was basically a fruit diet.

                Back at the end of the Cold War, former Soviet military

      • I sure it does, as he rolls around on top of his money, like Scrooge McDuck.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

          Rolling in cash does not produce serotonin.

          That's why money alone does not bring happiness.

          I believe Gates hasn't learnt that either. So many of his "charitable" investments seem to be circling back to him somehow and it sure didn't help his marriage any...

          Which is a human trait my autist brain can't wrap itself around... with so much money, you could single-handedly change the world and be forever hailed as a saint.

          Imagine creating non-profit real estate companies who do nothing other than building new hou

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            > Rolling in cash does not produce serotonin.

            Thats what the hookers and blow are for, which money buys lots of.

          • Rolling in cash does not produce serotonin.

            I really hope your overly reductive comment was just hyperbole. That's not how the brain works and that theory of neurology is very outdated and about as disproven and efficacious as humoral theory [wikipedia.org]. One could accurately describe it as a recapitulation of humorism.

            The point of the charity wasn't to be charitable. The point of the charity was to shield his wealth from taxation while still giving himself control over how that wealth is spent.

            If it was about being ch

          • I am with you. with so much money you could seriously make positive change in the world. So many countries don't have the cash that Bill Gates has.

            I thought his divorce was because he decided he needed some strange one night and Melinda found out?

      • and that it eats away at his conscience every single day of the rest of his miserable life.

        File CONSCIEN.CE not found.
        Abort, Retry, Fail?_

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      And it is going to go down again once the AI bubble bursts.

    • Microsoft stock was going nowhere for years with Ballmer in charge

      True as this may well be, I pine for the Ballmer days, personally.

      Windows 7 / Server 2008R2 / Office 2010 / Exchange 2010 was probably the peak of functionality and usability for on-prem MS software. Ballmer would have never let Recall see the light of day. Xbox360 was so successful, that Phil Spencer said, recently, "we have an Xbox for offline games...it's called the Xbox360". Ask most folks about tablets and they'll likely think that tablet computing started with the iPad, but Windows XP Tablet PC Editio

      • Wow - a defense of Microsoft and Windows that's actually convincing. Being the hater of both that I am, I'm impressed.

        ... it's not like Nadella is some savant who figured out that it's possible to keep the gravy train going through lock-ins and rent-seeking.

        I find that a little too long. Everything past the word "savant" is superfluous... ;-)

  • Richest (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @08:42AM (#64597321)

    The "Richest" people in the world lists are highly inaccurate. If you notice it's mostly people who own a lot of stock. That's because we know how much stock they own due to various financial disclosure rules.

    Notice who isn't on the list? Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia. As king, he has a relatively small personal fortune (a few tens of billions), but also has, basically, unlimited access to the country's wealth, as do his sons. To give an inkling of what this entails, when Mohammed bin Salman decided that Saudia airlines didn't have the same cachet as Emirates, he started another airline, buying 40 dreamliners. This is because the royal family controls the Public Investment Fund, that has access to around a trillion dollars in wealth.

    So, it's nice that Ballmer owns a hundred billion in Microsoft stock and all, but...

    • Traditionally, monarchs with control of sovereign wealth funds aren't counted- but you're right- they definitely have access to far more assets than the "top billionaire's list".
      The Emirate of Abu Dhabi has nearly a trillion in his sovereign wealth fund as well.
      • *Emir

      • The Emirate of Abu Dhabi has nearly a trillion in his sovereign wealth fund as well.

        Hah, I just looked it up. The Public Investment Fund *did* have $2 trillion at one point, but bin Salman decided to build a 10,000 square mile city and start the most expensive golf tour in the world, which drained it a bit.

        There's "I own a nice plane" money, then there's "I'm starting my own luxury airline from scratch" money.

  • Developers Developers Developers! (Score:3)

    by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @09:07AM (#64597403)
    All I can remember about Steve is this moment. [youtube.com] (developers!)
  • and Power.

  • Steve Ballmer is hundreds of thousands of times better than you!

  • Could have been wealthier (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @11:15AM (#64597831)

    If only he had gotten fired up about developers.

  • Divorce will do this to you.

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