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Imagine making $1 billion (approximately Rs 8,331.82 crore) a year for doing nothing. For Steve Ballmer, this ain’t imagination, but a reality! As the fifth richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of a staggering $131 billion (approximately Rs 10.9 lakh crore) according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of January 2, 2024, Steve Ballmer is the former Microsoft CEO and the current owner of Los Angeles Clippers, the popular NBA team.
Here’s how former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is set to make $1 billion for doing nothing:
According to CNN and Hindustan Times, Steve Ballmer, the largest individual shareholder in Microsoft, owns 4% of the tech giant, which is equivalent to 332.2 million shares. Steve will be earning close to $1 billion in annual dividend payments for the fiscal year 2024. This is simply for owning the stock, regardless of how it performs.
The reason behind Steve Ballmer’s impressive passive income is Microsoft’s decision to boost its quarterly dividend payout to 75 cents a share, which is $3 per share annually. According to CNN, the billionaire businessman will be subjected to a 20% tax on his Microsoft dividends, keeping under consideration his last reported income of $656 million (approximately Rs 5,465.73 crore) in 2018. This means that Ballmer will have to pay close to a massive $200 million (approximately Rs 1,666.47 crore) in taxes.
Steve Ballmer is famously known as Microsoft’s 30th employee and first business manager, who was hired by Bill Gates after Ballmer dropped out of Stanford’s MBA program. He took over from Gates as Chief Executive Officer (before his stint as President of Microsoft in 1998) of the tech conglomerate in 2000 after the first dot-com crash, at a time when Microsoft faced stiff competition from Google and Apple. In 2014, Ballmer retired as CEO and was replaced by Satya Nadella. Notably, there’s currently just a $10 billion (Rs 83,000 crore) difference between the net worths of Ballmer and Gates ($141 billion, approximately Rs 11.74 lakh crore, as of January 2, 2024).
According to Forbes, in the year he retired from Microsoft, Steve Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers for a massive $2 billion (approximately Rs 16,665 crore), with the NBA team’s current value standing at a mammoth $4.65 billion (approximately Rs 38,746 crore). For Steve Ballmer, philanthropy has since taken center as he co-founded Ballmer Group (alongside his wife Connie Ballmer), a philanthropic investment company in 2015. According to the company website, Ballmer Group “is committed to improving economic mobility for children and families in the United States. We fund leaders and organizations that have demonstrated the ability to reshape opportunity and reduce systemic inequities.”
The Ballmers have given away nearly $3.5 billion (approximately Rs 29,000 crore) to date, according to Forbes. As for a recent investment, Ballmer Group “is investing $175 million over the next seven years in StriveTogether (a non-profit organization in Cincinnati, Ohio) to support their Vision 2030, designed to put 4 million more young people on a path to economic mobility.”
