Steve Ballmer got only $550,000 of his predicted $700,000 bonus check, because Microsoft woefully overestimated how many Surface tablets it would sell. Microsoft was forced to take $900 million hit to its earnings due to awful Surface sales. Ballmer got also last year a smaller bonus than planned. Last year Microsoft failed to provide a browser choice screen on European PCs running Windows, as required by an 2009 antitrust settlement. Ballmer will retire by the end of next summer and he won’t get a retirement payout from Microsoft, but he owns ca. 333 million shares of Microsoft. And this stake is worth almost $11,3 billion. Continue reading »

tags: Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, Surface tablet