Just watched Pirates of Sillicon Valley, towards the end of the film some factoids are scolled through, one of which is that MS owns part of apple, presumably a large enough part to be worthy of mentioning. I could not find any reliable links via google to verify this nor any detailed info as to how large a stake MS has in apple.
Can anyone fill me in?
Microsoft purchased Apple stock for $150 million (3-4% non-voting). That was just after Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 and as part of a settlement of the intellectual property lawsuits in Apple had filed or threatened to file against Microsoft. As part of the deal they were required to hold on to the stock for at least three years. Microsoft also promised to continue developing on the Microsoft Office package to the Apple platform for five years. In addition to dropping lawsuits against Microsoft, Apple also promised to make the Microsoft Internet Explorer the default browser on the Mac. The shares have since been repurchased (with a nice profit for Microsoft).
If you’re curious about who owns what, as long as it’s a public company, you can always check Yahoo! Finance for a list of major stock holders. Apple’s page is here.
Gates could have spent far more than $150 million, but there was a $25 penalty if he raided his Christmas fund too early.
It’s often thought that this cash infusion saved Apple from bankruptcy; in fact Apple even then had about a billion in cash in the bank and had already returned to regular profitability.
Yeah, the important thing that Microsoft did — the absence of which would have bloodied Apple pretty badly — was commit to the continued development of Mac Office.
If Microsoft were to purchase a significant portion of Apple, it would instantly trigger a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into monopolistic practices and would almost certainly be disallowed. I’ll bet that the 1997 settlement was run past their lawyers for comment even with the tiny amount of non-voting stock involved.
At the time, I remember many discussions centering around the idea that Microsoft needed Apple to stick around as a viable company. If they’d gone bust or lost a whole lot more market share, it would leave MS alone in the desktop OS market (none of the alternatives had caught on at the time), and therefore more vulnerable to antitrust actions. Thus, MS was protecting itself by propping up Apple, and they would never have stopped developing Mac Office anyway.
Of course, shoehorning IE onto the Mac as part of the deal was one of the things that ended up fueling the antitrust problem for MS.
Interesting to look back on conventional wisdom…
From Value Line (a subscription stock info service)
Has 10,910 regular employees, 29,015 stockholders. Steve Jobs owns 1.4% of stock, other officers & directors, 3.4%; Lord, Abbett & Co., 10.0%; Private Capital Management, 6.1% (3/04 proxy). CEO: Steve Jobs. Inc.: CA. Add.: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014-2084. Tele.: 408-996-1010. Internet: http://www.apple.com.