There"s been lots of public advice from financial analysts in the past year who have claimed Microsoft would be better off ditching its consumer businesses, including a spin-off of its Xbox division. This week, the head of the financial investment group Vulcan Capital, Paul Ghaffari, said that Microsoft should consider such a spin-off.
However, the twist here is that Vulcan Capital is the investment firm that manages the $15 billion fortune of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The Financial Times reports that Ghaffari believes that Microsoft should concentrate just on its business customers and that even a successful division like Xbox is a distraction from those enterprise efforts. He added, "We would want them to focus on their best competencies."
Ghaffari said that Allen, who still owns about $2 billion in Microsoft stock, is "intrigued and interested" in the upcoming changes at the company which will likely be made when a new CEO is selected to replace Steve Ballmer. Ghaffari added that he felt the search for a new Microsoft CEO was going well but did not get into specifics. It"s unknown if Allen has any say in the CEO selection process.
Ghaffari also stated that he might put some of Allen"s money into Twitter when that company started publicly trading in early 2014. He feels that Twitter already has a strong base for advertising and they have just started on those efforts, adding, "I hope we get some shares."
Source: Financial Times | Image via Microsoft