Could John Thompson be the next CEO of Microsoft?

Ron

johnthompson

Now that Bill Gates has thrown-away the speculations of him being the head of the company he co-founded, if recent round of rumors are to be believed, former CEO of Symantec, John Thompson, could be handed over Microsoft’s CEO mantle.

This past week, Bill Gates, who was being conjectured to head his company again, made it perfectly clear that he isn’t making a return as CEO to the firm he confounded with Paul Allen 39 years ago.

Thompson who is the CEO of a privately-held firm called Virtual Instruments and a Microsoft board member, has led Symantec for over 10-year serving as its CEO. Before joining the security firm, he held a leadership position at IBM. CNet writes why it makes sense to make Thompson the next CEO of Redmond giant. And if Microsoft has different plans, at least Thompson could step as the interim CEO to iron out a few things.

Microsoft was also in-talks with Ford’s CEO Alan Mulally, who later took himself out of the race. So will Thomson sign up for the cruise? Well, we can’t be really sure about it just yet. However, striking off strong potential candidates like Microsoft cloud chief Satya Nadella and former Skype head Tony Bates might still be too early.