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Bill Gates’ former assistant could soon be richer than Microsoft’s co-founder.
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With his fortune of $154 billion, Steve Ballmer is just behind his former boss on Bloomberg’s rich list.
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Ballmer’s vast wealth stems from the contract he negotiated when he was hired by Microsoft in 1980.
The former assistant to Bill Gates has risen in the rankings of the richest people in the world and could soon overtake the legendary Microsoft co-founder and his old boss in terms of wealth.
Steve Ballmer’s fortune is estimated to have grown by $24 billion this year to $154 billion, putting him seventh on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is now just $3 billion behind Gates – in sixth place, with $157 billion –, up from $17 billion last summer.
The index shows Ballmer is richer than many major billionaires, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($153 billion), Alphabet’s Sergey Brin ($148 billion), Warren Buffett ($135 billion), Michael Dell ($120 billion) and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang ($115). billion).
He joined Microsoft in 1980 as assistant to the president, although he served more as a business manager than as a PA. Ballmer originally negotiated a base salary of $50,000 plus 10% of the profit growth he generated, but when his share of the profits became excessive, he agreed to exchange it for a significant equity stake, according to Forbes.
Gates’ trusted advisor rose to become CEO of Microsoft in 2000. He retired in 2014 with 333 million shares, or a 4% stake, regulatory filings show.
Bloomberg assumes he has retained most of those shares, leaving him with a position valued at more than $150 billion based on Microsoft’s share price. He’s also likely collected billions of dollars in dividends over the years.
Ballmer’s wealth has skyrocketed in the past year, largely due to the artificial intelligence boom, which has boosted Microsoft’s stock. The computer giant’s stake in OpenAI has fueled hopes it can disrupt Alphabet’s dominant position in Internet search, helping Microsoft’s shares rise by about a third in the past 12 months.
It’s worth emphasizing that Ballmer is an anomaly among the 10 richest people on Bloomberg’s rich list. Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos and the rest owe their wealth to stakes in companies they founded or still run, while Ballmer is not the founder or current CEO of Microsoft.
If he skips Gates, who has diversified his fortune from Microsoft stock and donated large sums to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other charities, it would be a very rare case of an employee becoming richer than his company’s founder .
Read the original article on Business Insider
