Microsoft's Stephen Elop, Mark Penn to leave company

Four top executives are leaving Microsoft Corporation, including former Nokia boss Stephen Elop and former Democratic political strategist Mark Penn. CEO Satya Nadella said the reorganization will help Microsoft focus on building "services and platforms for the mobile-first, cloud-first world."

|
Bogdan Cristel/Reuters/File
The Microsoft logo is seen at their offices in Bucharest in this March 20, 2013 file photo. Four top executives are leaving Microsoft Corporation, including former Nokia boss Stephen Elop and former Democratic political strategist Mark Penn.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is shuffling his top management team, announcing the departure of former Nokia boss Stephen Elop and three other top executives.

Elop had left Microsoft once before to run Nokia, then returned when Microsoft bought the Finnish company's smartphone business for $7.5 billion last year. Analysts said his departure now is a sign that Microsoft is rethinking its approach to the phone business, where it has struggled to make a profit despite recent layoffs and other spending cuts.

Also leaving the company is Mark Penn, a former Democratic political strategist who oversaw some of Microsoft'smarketing efforts including the hard-hitting "Scroogled" advertising campaign that criticized products made by tech rival Google. While the campaign drew attention, industry experts said it did not appear to help Microsoft'sbusiness.

In an email to employees on Wednesday, Nadella praised the departing executives and said the reorganization will help Microsoft focus on building "services and platforms for the mobile-first, cloud-first world."

Microsoft said the "devices group" run by Elop will be folded into a new division run by Terry Myerson, an executive vice president who will also continue to oversee the company's flagship Windows operating system.

Nadella has pushed Microsoft to produce more software for mobile devices, while scaling back the smartphone hardware business since the Nokia acquisition, which was negotiated by his predecessor as CEO, Steve Ballmer.

Elop was once considered a possible successor to Ballmer, but the top job went to Nadella. Elop's departure now is further evidence that Nadella felt the strategy behind the Nokia acquisition "was clearly not heading down the right path," said investment analyst Daniel Ives of FBR Capital Markets, in an email.

Other executives will take over operations led by departing managers Kirill Tatarinov and Eric Rudder.

Nadella said Penn's departure as "chief insights officer" was unrelated to the company's reorganization. He said Penn is leaving in September to form a private equity fund.

Microsoft shares slipped 36 cents to $45.47 in afternoon trading. Microsoft shares have risen 9 percent over the past year.

AP Business Writer Damian Troise contributed to this story from New York.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Microsoft's Stephen Elop, Mark Penn to leave company
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0617/Microsoft-s-Stephen-Elop-Mark-Penn-to-leave-company
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe