Microsoft renews top management, 4 key executives leaving the firm

Four top executives are leaving tech giant Microsoft, including former Clinton adviser Mark Penn and the exdirector of Nokia, Stephen Elop, in a leadership shuffle announced Wednesday by the firm’s CEO, Satya Nadella.

The leadership changes constitute the biggest switch so far during Nadella’s tenure at the helm of Microsoft, which will be divided into three big departments “Windows and devices,” to be headed by Terry Myerson, “Cloud and enterprise,” which will be overseen by Scott Guthrie, and “Applications and services,” with Qi Lu as its chief.

In an email to company employees to inform them of the changes in top personnel, Nadella said that the larger changes in the firm’s structure required Microsoft to examine its leadership and the result was that several veteran team leaders will be leaving the company.

According to Nadella, Penn, who worked on both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s election campaigns, had announced last September his intention to leave the company to form his own investment fund.

With regard to Elop, whose duties fell in the area that Myerson now occupies, the Microsoft chief said that they had come to a joint decision and he lamented the loss of leadership his departure means for the company.

Joining Penn and Elop in their move out the door are Eric Rudder, who had been with the firm for more than 25 years, and Kirill Tatarinov, under whose direction the firm’s Dynamics business grew into a $2 billion operation.

After the announcement of the changes, shares of Microsoft one of the 30 Dow Jones components fell 0.2 percent on the Nasdaq exchange.