Steve Ballmer Biography
Steven Ballmer is an American business magnate and investor who served as Microsoft’s CEO from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers (NBA).
How old is Steve Ballmer? – Age
He is 66 years old as of 24 March 2022. He was born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. His real name is Steven Anthony Ballmer.
Steve Ballmer Family
He is the son of Beatrice Dvorkin and Frederic Henry (Fritz Hans) Ballmer, a Ford Motor Company manager. Frederic came to the United States in 1948 from Zuchwil, Switzerland. Steve’s mother was the daughter of Shmuel Dvorkin, a Russian Jew who fled to America in 1914 and worked as a glass store merchant. Ballmer is a second cousin of actress and comedian Gilda Radner through his mother. Ballmer grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan, an affluent community. From 1964 to 1967, Ballmer lived in Brussels and attended the International School of Brussels.
Did Steve Ballmer drop out? – Education
In 1973, he enrolled at Lawrence Technological University for college preparation and engineering classes. He graduated as valedictorian from Detroit Country Day School, a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan, with an SAT math score of 800 and was a National Merit Scholar.
Ballmer attended Harvard University, where he was a manager for the Harvard Crimson football team and a member of the Fox Club. He also worked on The Harvard Crimson and The Harvard Advocate newspapers, and he lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He outperformed Bill Gates in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, an exam sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America. In 1977, he received a magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in applied mathematics and economics.
Steve Ballmer Wife – Children
He has been married to Connie Snyder since 1990; they have three sons; Sam Ballmer, Aaron Ballmer and Peter Ballmer.
How is Steve Ballmer so rich? – Wealth
He became the second person, after Roberto Goizueta, to become a billionaire in US dollars as a result of stock options he received as an employee of a corporation in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a founder. Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his personal wealth at $117 billion as of November 2021, ranking him as the world’s eighth richest person.
Steve Ballmer Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $94 billion and is rated as the ninth-richest person on Earth.
Steve Ballmer Clippers
Following the Donald Sterling scandal in May 2014, Ballmer was the highest bidder in an attempt to purchase the Los Angeles Clippers for a reported price of $2 billion, the second highest bid in North American sports history (after the $2.15 billion sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012). On August 12, 2014, it was officially announced that Ballmer would become the Los Angeles Clippers owner after a California court confirmed Shelly Sterling’s authority to sell the team.
Ballmer agreed to buy The Forum in Inglewood, California, in March 2020. Because the former owners of The Forum opposed plans for a new Clippers arena, the purchase would allow him to build the Intuit Dome in the surrounding area.
Steve Ballmer USAFacts
In 2017, Ballmer established USAFacts.org, a non-profit organization whose mission is to help people understand US government revenue, spending, and societal impact. He is said to have contributed $10 million to fund research teams that populated the website’s database with official data.
How much of Microsoft does Steve Ballmer own?
On June 11, 1980, Ballmer joined Microsoft as the company’s 30th employee and the first business manager hired by Gates. He was offered a $50,000 salary as well as 5-10% ownership of the company. When Microsoft was founded in 1981, Ballmer owned 8% of the company. In 2003, Ballmer sold 39.3 million Microsoft shares for approximately $955 million, reducing his ownership to 4%. He also replaced Microsoft’s employee stock option program that year.
Ballmer led several Microsoft divisions for the next 20 years, including operations, operating system development, and sales and support. He was Executive Vice President, Sales and Support, beginning in February 1992. Ballmer oversaw Microsoft’s.NET Framework development. Ballmer was then promoted to Microsoft President, a position he held from July 1998 to February 2001, making him the de facto number two in the company to Bill Gates, the chairman and CEO.