Maritz says he’s not interested in replacing Steve Ballmer

Dec 7, 2013 14:26 GMT  ·  By

Paul Maritz, former senior vice-president for American tech giant Microsoft, said in a statement that he was not interested in replacing Steve Ballmer at the helm of the company, even though people familiar with the matter said he was one of the candidates for the job.

Paul Maritz, currently head of cloud firm Pivotal, told PC Pro that he had no intention to leave, adding that he was “too old” for the Microsoft CEO position.

“I'm happy to say I took my hat out of that ring very early on,” he said. “I'm 58 years old and I'm not up for that journey. I've learnt that it's easy to be a back-seat driver - all these jobs are hard and you give advice at your peril.”

At this point, Ford’s CEO Alan Mulally and Satya Nadella, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, are the front-runners for the CEO position, with an announcement expected by year-end.