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Microsoft Cuts Bosses’ Bonuses

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From Bloomberg News

Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday that it cut bonuses paid to Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer as profit growth slowed in three of the last four quarters.

Gates and Ballmer each earned $616,667 in salary in the fiscal year ended in June, up 2.8% from a year earlier. Both had their bonuses cut 13% to $350,000, Microsoft said in a regulatory filing. It was the first cut in total salary and bonus for Gates since 1998 and the first for Ballmer since 2000.

Earnings growth has stalled as Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft spent more to get the Xbox video game console in stores and endured delays for the release of the Vista version of the Windows operating system. The company’s stock fell 6.2% during the fiscal year, compared with a 6.6% gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

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“This is probably a function of management wanting to show that the top dogs are accountable for the numbers they produce the same way everybody else is accountable,” said Tony Ursillo at Loomis, Sayles & Co. in Boston.

Shares of Microsoft rose 57 cents to $27.94.

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