The board is also considering replacing bill gates as chairman, possibly with John Thompson. He was the former ceo of symantec will stop this is according to people have been briefed on the process and how it has been going. Bloomberg told vision did it catch up with him after the web conference in paris and ask him about the ceo search. The microsoft board is working on the process. Steve ballmer is the ceo and im actively engaged in running the enterprise group. [inaudible] i said everything im going to say about that topic. We have Jon Erlichman from l. A. He helped to break this story. I will start with you. How close is the board to naming him and how did they come to this decision . We are pretty far along in this process and what a process it has been. This is something that began and we were notified last year in august that steve ulmer would be stepping down within 12 months. We thought there might be a decision by the end of the year and that didnt happen. The hope was to have this all resolved by early 2014. If you think about how big a process it has been, maybe we should cut some slack to microsoft in the sense that they talked about having at least a hundred candidates. Some of them being from Big Companies that are not iker soft. Whether it was ericsson, forward or qualcomm the long list of internal candidates i think they are far enough along in the process that you have this understanding that somebody like Satya Nadella, who truly is running one of the growth parts of the microsoft story and is one of the news parts of where microsoft is going, coupled with a second executive chairman John Thompson, all of a sudden the board is feeling better about where things stand on that front. Theres still a lot of questions about what the future of microsoft will be given Steve Ballmer laid out what he saw as the future he for announcing he would step down. Im curious to know your thoughts. Hes been an employee at microsoft for a long time. Can he inject the change microsoft needs . If you look at what he has done, hes done a phenomenal job and brought a vision to the cloud part of the business that moves them on a trajectory to be relevant on the third platform and be relevant in a cloud enabled world. There is no perfect candidate here and to johns point, thats why this search was so difficult. They were searching for a candidate who would be a well rounded woman or man who could manage all aspects of the business. At the end of the day, they had to go where they felt the person would take microsoft in the future and that is to the cloud and third platform. Thats what we are seeing here. Its an acknowledgment that microsoft is not going to be the company we have known them to be in the past. A little bit of a safe bet. I want to bring in our guest from seattle. I know youre close with some of the microsoft executives. What do you think of the choice of Satya Nadella . I think its an excellent choice. I think ive shared that on your show before and there are two things to add one is that he has been able to push the limit on things like running clinics on azure, the microsoft cloud. Thats a big shift in thinking for microsoft to do Something Like that. His ability to change the thinking and get angst done is an important a compliment. The second thing is he is very external focus. For someone who has been at microsoft a long time, hes one of the most engaged people in the marketplace. He spoke to our ceos this year and i know he a gauges with the Tech Community in Silicon Valley as well. I want to talk a little more about the choice but i also want to get to the other ward changes with John Thompson replacing bill gates potentially as executive chairman. Bill gates was just on Bloomberg Television and we asked him what his plans for the future are and how he will continue to be involved. My fulltime work will be the fulltime foundation for the rest of my life. My wife and i are enjoying it. Im not going to change that, though i will help out part time. Jon erlichman, what can you tell us about a potential board shakeup coming and will gates remain and will ballmer remain in the boardroom . These are all good questions. I will start with the thinking of what goes into a ceo selection. As we highlighted, this is a company that has spoken to a lot of outside candidates about this job. One of the concerns named as a possibility to coming to microsoft is whats going to be like in that boardroom . Am i ultimately reporting to bill gates . What is Steve Ballmers involvement going to be . He just outlined what his future is for this company how much will room door i have as a chief executive . Theres that narratives and then theres selecting an internal candidate and this idea of people looking at that and if bill gates remained as chairman, people asking the question is this the same old microsoft . Is there Something Different here . While that is more pr issues, the bigger issue at the board level is if you are Satya Nadella, and this is someone very well known in the Tech Community and doing some innovative stuff, what about running a company like microsoft a big global beast, having to deal with all sorts of different jurisdictions and tax stuff . A lot of messy things that come with being a large company. Since we are talking about John Thompson, youve got someone who has run a Large Technology company, but somebody who has a Good Relationship with wall street. It all starts to make some sense. We are still waiting to see what happens in the boardroom itself, but given your familiarity with how things work internally at microsoft, do you think he can make the changes that need to be made with the gates and ballmer potentially still in the boardroom . I think it is possible. I do believe it would be unlikely for both of those folks to be on the board one year from now. The reason i say that is less to do with microsoft specifically than historically what you see. I think it is a typical for a ceo to remain on the board for an extensive time beyond making that transition. In this case, you have the two former leaders of the company, the only two ceos in the history of the company, and one of the two of them remaining on the board, and that in all likelihood being gates, would be enough. But im just speculating. You can get a lot of value out of either bill or steve to the point that this is a big, complicated company in an era where technology is rapidly changing. A new ceo, firsttime ceo, i would want all the assets i could possibly have at my disposal. Especially people i worked with and trusted for a long time. Obviously, they know Satya Nadella very well and they trust him. We will continue this conversation in just a few minutes of stop we are continuing the conversation on the future leader of microsoft. Welcome back. Im emily chang. Microsofts board is close to naming Satya Nadella as the new ceo. He currently runs the enterprise and cloud business. We are also reporting that all gates could be replaced as executive chairman by John Thompson who has been leading the microsoft ceo search. Sources are telling Bloomberg News all of this. I want to bring in our special roundtable, Jon Erlichman, who helped write the story. We spoke with Satya Nadella just last month in paris. Listen to what he had to say about what he thinks is most exciting. Microsoft is an exciting place to be right now. If you look at her oddly what we are doing with our devices and services, the launch of the surface two and xbox, what were doing with cloud computing, its an amazing spot to be in. Having an impact across society at large, that is why it is exciting to be at microsoft. Any clues as to what his strategy might be . What should his strategy be when he takes his post . The clues there is hes talking a lot about other parts of the business. Hes talking about client strategy and the idea of welding hardware and software closer together and creating a differentiated customer experience. Hes obviously talking about Cloud Services and bringing a vision to the company that i think they need to be bold and they need to work very hard to try and create a new kind of solution that may be for lack of a better term, their religion in the past had not allowed them to do. He needs to think about his sort of general and the kind of people running xbox and allowing them to continue to innovate and allow them to innovate in the consumer parts of the business as he calls on his strength, which are in the server tools and cloudbased business. I think the changes at microsoft are very positive. Change is good here and hes going to bring a fresh perspective and probably exercise some demons some some have not been willing to do in the past. You have to wonder if he will make some tough decisions. Some people have said microsoft should split it consumer and Enterprise Businesses in half and make them two separate companies. What will be the Biggest Challenges for him going into this . You are raising one good topic, which is thinking about all the Business Units and undertaking a very thoughtful analysis of which of those businesses are truly strategic . That will take a little time to figure out, so i dont think well see any moves in the first couple of months. But perhaps more important than that is notice how he used the word excitement at least three times in that short clip that you have. Theres a need to reenergize the Community Excitement around microsoft and microsoft assets as a platform, whether that is xbox or their cloud to form because microsoft is the most successful of the traditional big tech Cap Companies as you look at Revenue Growth and market cap growth, that there isnt the same level of excitement. Especially in this era, you need the community on your side to win beyond anything you can do yourself. He said exciting a few times. Listen to this, he says it again. It is an amazing spot to be in, and invading and taking to market and having broad impacts across society at large. That is why its exciting to be at microsoft. And thats why you are in it for the long haul . Absolutely. Not just exciting, but amazing. Hes early sounds like he has the support of the employees and the respect of the employees, but is it almost too rosy what you are hearing from him . I think people can be optimistic and realistic. All bigcap Tech Companies have a challenge right now and microsoft is one of those will stop they have a broader suite of phonics they are out there trying to push and succeed at in different markets. I dont think his optimism, his external facing presence, suggest he isnt a realist as far as the challenges ahead. What do you think . Building on some of the things that have been said here, if you look at what he needs to do going forward, what he needs to focus on is being able to grow the company across multiple dimensions. I agree he will be studying different aspects of the business, but i would take a little issue with the idea that there hasnt been excitement. Steve ballmer has wrought a lot of excitement and a tremendous amount of passion to this company. I think what we see now is there needs to be an evolution and what has been so impressive about what he has done to date is he has brought developers into the cloud and harnessed the Developer Network onto the service and tools product tommys bringing those people to azure and making microsoft relevant in the cloud. That is the kind of fantastic excitement that is platform, it is developer base, it needs applications that differentiate microsoft in the future, but that is the kind of fundamental rethinking the Company Needs to do to be relevant going forward. Doing that across multiple dimensions will be difficult to do, but he has accomplished a tremendous amount. I dont know that it wasnt that there wasnt excitement before but it needs to be in the new era of computing and thats what he has the possibility to bring. Its hard to forget Steve Ballmer jumping around. He did bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the job. Here he is Steve Ballmer onstage, does Satya Nadella have the charisma that the leader of a company like microsoft may need to have . I thought you were going to ask does he jumped onstage stage, and i dont have the answer to that. I think we had to continue to dissect this word exciting because everything youve heard is correct. Microsoft is growing and there is a fun part of that story and they are a fun, nation of google and amazon, but relevant when we talk about Companies Like salesforce to a certain degree. In the world of the consumer, the story we have told is one of devices that apple makes that people want to buy, that manufacturers like sam some makes, on the consumer level, people not really being that interested in microsoft products. I think bringing those two together or finding a way to change the messaging is going to be one of the big challenges. Jon erlichman, our senior west coast correspondent in l. A. Were going to have to leave it there. Thank you all for weighing in. The microsoft board close to naming Satya Nadella as its new ceo. Coming up, a Security Breach hits yahoo . We will talk about that, next. Welcome back. We are turning to our top story microsofts aboard appearing to make Satya Nadella the next ceo. Joining us now is a former microsoft executive who worked directly under Satya Nadella. He joins us on the phone from seattle. Tell us what hes like. He has been for quite some time at microsoft identified as a rising star. I had the good fortune of working with him early on in my career when i joined the company in 1995. They are there are two or three main strengths i can see with him and why perhaps microsoft accepted him. If they are selecting him. The first is he has a wonderful ability to be able to identify nearterm winwin opportunities across the company, especially among product unit and divisions that might not be inclined to collaborate. And to do so in a way that enables multiple organizations to find a winwin solution. That is within a large Bureaucratic Organization like microsoft, a really rare asset to have. Second, he has a very strong engineering background but has gone so far as to expand his skill set in terms of bringing on more executive skills with his executive mba from northwestern. Or maybe it was the university of chicago. To be able to really communicate across multiple disciplines in the company. Designers interacting and collaborating with engineers, sales and marketing. Thats a rare goal set in the company. I want to continue this conversation after a quick break. Michael kim, former microsoft executive that worked closely with Satya Nadella. We will hear more from him after this quick break. Welcome back. Im emily chang. Our top story, iker soft is close to naming Satya Nadella as their ceo, the guy who runs their cloud and Enterprise Business and has been working at microsoft since 1992. Someone who worked with him is michael kim, a former iker soft executive he is the founder and ceo of habit design. He joins us on the phone from seattle. You were talking about how Satya Nadella is a star internally and was identified very early on. But externally, he is not a known quantity. How much does that matter . Maybe its the seattle culture. We tend not to toot our own horn too much appear. It could be a cultural personality you are saying. I dont think it matters as much in terms of microsofts next stage of evolution. I think you see someone who has a proven track record to take on very ambitious and challenging and dangerous raj x. But then also to be able to make people feel they are moving onto the next big thing. I think those are attributes you would want to see in any executive regardless of how much they to their own warm toot their own horn. Does he have the charisma he needs for a job like this . It is a good question. I dont know him other than my interactions with him early on in my career from 95 to 99 in microsoft. I dont know him personally that well and in the most recent past, if you look at his performance and presentation on stage, he is the kind of person who can engender quite a lot of confidence, someone who can identify and articulate new opportunities in a way many different teams can rally behind. It is the kind of charisma you need to have an someone who will lead microsoft to the next level. Do you think he has what it takes to make difficult decisions, whatever they may be . That is hard to tell. Many decisions are made without a book disclosure in terms of how they were ultimately made and who is involved in the decision. My experience has been he evaluates data that leads to a decision very carefully and understands multiple facets of decisionmaking, not just perhaps the engineers perspective, which is very important in a multidisciplinary point of view. He has been willing to take on very difficult challenges that were very risky for the company, whether it the new web search or Cloud Services these are not projects you would want someone who wasnt wi