By announcing a 12-month timetable for his departure as Microsoft‘s chief executive, Steven Ballmer has signaled an impending end to one of the most prolific deal-making streaks in technology over the past two decades.
But his record as a serial acquirer is as much notable for its misses as its hits.
Under Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft has purchased 149 companies, according to data from Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ. Most were well under $1 billion. But some were genuine blockbusters, notably the $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype in 2011 and the nearly $6 billion takeover of aQuantive in 2007.
In general, Microsoft has used deals to either move into new business areas, from messaging to digital advertising to social networking.
It’s too soon to tell how well Skype has been working out for Microsoft, which has been working to integrate the video messaging service into core products like Windows. Skype has grown under its new parent, rising from about $800 million in sales two years ago to an expected $2 billion for its current fiscal year.
Microsoft also joined Apple, BlackBerry and others in a collective $4.5 billion bid for patents held by the defunct Nortel Networks two years ago. The unusual move was meant to keep the cellular networking patents available for the entire industry, and trumped a competing offer by archrival Google.
But aQuantive proved an expensive flop. Microsoft took a $6.2 billion accounting charge â€" essentially writing off the entire deal â€" for the unit last summer.
Still, the most notable deal effort that Mr. Ballmer undertook may be the one he couldn’t finish: Yahoo. The Microsoft chief audaciously bid for the Web pioneer in early 2008, calling a merger of the two as “the next major milestone†in his company’s future. But three months of fruitless talks, during which Mr. Ballmer neither significantly raised his bid beyond $33 a share nor decided to go fully hostile, passed by before he walked away.
Not all of the blame lies with Mr. Ballmer. Yahoo was persistent â€" too stubborn, in many investors’ views â€" in resisting Microsoft’s approach. And some shareholders were unhappy with the intercessions of Carl C. Icahn, a major Yahoo stakeholder.
But the collapse of what would have been a blockbuster $45 billion merger lingered for years afterward, and Microsoft never seriously attempted another deal of that magnitude again.
It remains to be seen whether his successor, whether that person comes from inside or outside the technology behemoth, will attempt to be as bold.
