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Bloomberg reports Microsoft's (MSFT -0.5%) board is looking to narrow the company's CEO shortlist to 3-5 people at a Monday meeting, and want to name a Steve Ballmer successor as soon as next month.
- A source claims the board is likely to opt for an outsider; that might suggest Ford's (F -0.1%) Alan Mulally (once reported to be the frontrunner) and Nokia's Stephen Elop (reportedly open to unloading Xbox and Bing) are more likely to win out than rumored internal candidates such as server/cloud chief Satya Nadella, ex-Skype CEO Tony Bates, and COO/sales chief Kevin Turner.
- With regards to Mulally, directors are said to be weighing his lack of an IT background with "a desire for the new CEO to have solid management credentials at the helm of a large company."
- The board meeting comes ahead of Microsoft's Tuesday annual meeting, the final one Ballmer will host.
- Meanwhile, hedge fund Highfields Capital has disclosed it upped its Microsoft stake by 6x in Q3 to 31.3M shares (current value of $1.18B). Activist investor ValueAct (recently won a board seat) raised its stake by 9M shares to 66.8M (current value of $2.53B).