Written by Anaisa Arora, a grade 8 student.

Microsoft Corp announced Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella as its next chairman, succeeding John Thompson. Nadella, who succeeded Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014, has been pivotal in the company’s success scaling, including billion-dollar acquisitions such as LinkedIn, Nuance Communications, and ZeniMax. 

In this capacity, Nadella will lead the effort to define the board’s agenda, utilising his deep expertise of the business to elevate the proper strategic opportunities and identify critical risks and mitigation strategies for the board’s evaluation.

Thompson, who took over as chairman of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 2014, will serve as a lead independent director, according to the corporation. Nadella succeeds Thompson, who will retain significant authority as the lead independent director, including providing input on board agendas on behalf of the independent directors, calling meetings of the independent directors, setting agendas for executive sessions, and leading performance evaluations of the CEO.

Nadella, who has been CEO since 2014, has helped convert the business into a cloud computing powerhouse in recent years, resulting in blockbuster revenues and a market valuation of nearly USD 2 trillion, as per CNN.

In addition to these changes in roles, the board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of USD 0.56 per share. The dividend will be paid on September 9, 2021, to stockholders who were on the records on August 19, 2021.

A bit about Satya Nadella

• He grew up in Hyderabad
• His mother was a Sanskrit lecturer, and his father was an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer.
• Satya did a Bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in 1988
• He then pursued a Master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, USA
• Worked at Sun Microsystems, Inc., in a tech role
• Joined Microsoft in the US in 1992
• He first worked on the development of Windows NT,
• While working full-time at Microsoft, he earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago.

Now that we have caught up on the news we still have to emphasise the difference of roles as a chairman and as a CEO (Chief executive officer)

For the first time in 2 decades Microsoft has the same person as the Chairman and CEO, Let’s see the difference between the two roles.

CEO	CHAIRMAN
The CEO (Chief Executive officer) is the highest-ranking senior executive in charge of operations and administration. The CEO is the company’s main decision-maker and is in the authority of overseeing everyday operations and logistics. The CEO is directly in charge of managing the company’s senior executives.  The CEO appoints top executives and managers to head business unit committees.	A company’s chairman is the leader of its board of directors or board of trustees. Beyond the operations of a firm, the chairman guides high-level policy choices.  The chairman has direct control over the company’s board members.  The chairman appoints board members to act as advisors to business unit committee members.

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