Steve Ballmer takes over from Bill Gates as Microsoft’s largest individual shareholder

He may no longer be CEO, but Steve Ballmer is now officially Microsoft’s largest shareholder. The now retired Ballmer takes over from Bill Gates after the latter sold some 4.6-million shares in the Redmond-based giant.

As per a recently released SEC document, the sale means that Gates holds 330 141 164 shares in the company. Ballmer, in comparison, owns 333 252 990 shares.

It’s interesting that Gates has taken the decision to dump so much stock at the same time as he’s taking on a more active role in the company. As TechCrunch notes however, the sell-off is hardly unexpected.

In fact, it’s pretty much in line with an estimate made by ComputerWord’s Greg Keizzer in January:

At his 10-year pace of selling stock, Gates will hand over the shareholding crown to Ballmer before mid-2014. Gates will have exhausted his holdings by September 2018 unless he stops or slows his selling.

The real point of interest now will be to see how much stock Satya Nadella is capable of accumulating in his tenure as CEO. His US$20-million a year salary does, after all, include fairly substantial stock options.

He can also grab hold of some fairly substantial stock options if he meets the goals set out for him in his CEO contract. Indeed, TechCrunch reckons his stock ownership could hit nine figures in his first five years in charge if he hits those targets.

Despite Ballmer and Gates now holding similar numbers of Microsoft shares, Gates still has a much larger fortune — somewhere in the region of US$77-billion, in comparison with the US$20-billion Ballmer can lay claim to.