Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a broad reorganisation of the company’s senior executive ranks as long-time chief operating officer Kevin Turner prepares to leave for another job.
Instead of naming a new COO, Nadella appointed two executives to divvy up the sales responsibilities and report to him.
Jean-Philippe Courtois will be in charge of global sales, marketing and operations spanning Microsoft’s 13 business areas, Nadella said in a note to employees on Thursday.
Judson Althoff will lead the worldwide commercial business, including government and small and medium-sized businesses.
Other executives already reporting to Nadella will take on parts of Turner’s job, with Chris Capossela leading worldwide marketing, Kurt DelBene leading IT and chief financial officer Amy Hood taking over the sales and marketing team’s finance group, which had been separate.
Turner is leaving Microsoft after more than a decade at the company to become CEO of the securities unit at financial services firm Citadel.
At Microsoft, Turner, 51, oversaw more than 51 000 employees and drove sales and marketing efforts of Office 365. He will join Citadel after a short transition period, the Chicago-based firm said on Thursday in a statement.
Nadella said in the letter that he and Turner had been discussing what needs to be done in sales and support to help Microsoft “continue to reach for the next level of customer centricity and obsession”.
In order to do that, with Turner leaving, Nadella said he made the decision to more closely embed the sales, marketing and operations organisation into the rest of the company.
Microsoft chairman John Thompson also noted in an interview in May that the board was considering whether there were changes to be made to the sales and partner organisations to more quickly increase cloud revenue.
The company declined to say on Thursday whether Thompson’s comments were in any way related to Turner’s departure.
Turner had been in talks to secure the Citadel job prior to the publication of Thompson’s comments and had been looking at a CEO role for several years, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Turner had been one of the candidates considered for the Microsoft CEO job that Nadella ultimately got.
Microsoft was up by 0,4% to US$51,56 at 8.59am in New York. The shares are down 7,4% so far this year. — (c) 2016 Bloomberg LP