Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced that its Chief Executive Officer, Satya Nadella, will become the new chair of the company’s board of directors, replacing independent director John Thompson.
The change reflects the success Nadella has had in the past seven years making Microsoft more prominent in technology and business. The company’s board voted unanimously to name Nadella as the new board chair.
Under Nadella, Microsoft regained the title of world’s most valuable public company. Today it stands as the second most valuable company behind Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), with Microsoft stock having risen more than 600% since Nadella became CEO.
During Nadella’s tenure, Microsoft has become more focused on cloud computing services to power other company’s applications, and the company has expanded through acquisitions of business social network LinkedIn, source code-sharing site GitHub and video-game developer Zenimax.
Nadella is one of Microsoft’s top individual shareholders, owning 1.6 million shares of the company’s stock.
The move to appoint Nadella chair of the board of directors comes a year after Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft and its first CEO, left the company’s board. Gates stepped down after the board investigated a report that he had tried to start an intimate relationship with an employee back in 2000.
Thompson, formerly the CEO of Symantec, joined Microsoft’s board in 2012 and replaced Gates as Microsoft’s Chairman in 2014, on the same day that Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer as the CEO of Microsoft.