Chairman & CEO: Satya Nadella gets top job at MS Office

Satya Nadella was unanimously elected as executive chairman of Microsoft on Thursday, nearly three decades after he joined the iconic software maker that has since transformed into a cloud computing giant under the watch of the India-born chief executive and is now the world’s second most valuable company after phone maker Apple. Nadella is only the second chief executive officer, after cofounder Bill Gates, to also serve as the chairman of the $143 billion global technology corporation.

The soft-spoken 54-year old, architect of Microsoft’s aggressive makeover into one of the world’s leading providers of cloud computing services under the Azure brand, has overseen the rise in the company’s market capitalisation by a whopping 600% to nearly $2 trillion, while revenues have nearly doubled from $77.85 billion in financial year 2013. Microsoft follows the July-June financial year. Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer as CEO of the Seattle-headquartered giant in 2014, at the same time that Gates stepped down as chairman of the company’s board to be replaced by John Thompson.