Boston, MA 11/08/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is rumored to have narrowed down the number of people it may hire from outside the company to replace CEO Steve Ballmer to about five candidates.
The list of five includes current Chief of Ford Motor Co’s Alan Mulally and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. There are three people working in the company that have made the shortlist. This list included former Skype CEO Tony Bates, who is now in charge of business development for the company, and Satya Nadella, who is heading the company’s cloud and enterprise division.
Even after the short listing of the candidates, the process of naming a new CEO could take a few more months. In August the current CEO of Microsoft had announced his decision to retire in the next 12 months.
The names of the other people who were on the short list could not be learnt and the committee which is in charge of interviewing candidates is speaking to people from a wide range of sectors. Microsoft refused to speak on the issue or on behalf of the company executives who were on the short list.
While the Nokia spokesperson was not available for comment the Ford spokesperson Jay Cooney said that the company had not changed its mind from what it had said last November. Mr. Mullaly continues to be focused on the company’s One Ford plan.
In other news the company was forced to send out an emergency fix for its software when it learnt that hackers had taken advantage of security flaw that was not discovered earlier in its Office software, which would infect the computers of its clients with spoilt word files.
On its website the company said that it had released software called “Fix It,” as a temporary step till it provides an update which will protect the computes from the latest danger.
