Microsoft stock was flat under Ballmer because of hangover from the massive dotcom bust in 2000 and the DOJ consent decree which didn't expire until 2011. It would've been hard for anyone else to do better.

The DOJ consent decree was toothless and a non-issue.

The one that hurt Microsoft was the EU decrees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission may remind you of that.

That said, the one thing Ballmer did right is that he took on the difficult problem of locking down Microsoft products on a security front. This was a hard and thankless task, but absolutely necessary in the long run.

You're correct about the EU decrees; I should have mentioned those as well.

That was Gates.

Hard to tell.

Ballmer became CEO in 2000. But Bill Gates continued being involved in day to day operations until 2009.

Considering that Microsoft got religious about security in the 2000s, and this was a shift in corporate policy, I give credit to Ballmer.

He's talking about the TwC initiative, which came from Gates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustworthy_computing. Even after stepping down as CEO, Gates maintained an informal role at MS as an ideas guy for a number of years.

The usual tendency is to give credit to the person who comes up with the idea, and the blame to the person who implements it.

But ideas are a dime a dozen. I give credit not to coming up with the idea, but to actually putting in the elbow grease. And there is no question that Ballmer put a lot of elbow grease into keeping the initiative going.

Basing your opinion of a CEO solely on stock prices, which can easily be inflated via things like buybacks, is perhaps a bit narrow minded.

A company is more than its stock price.

Inflating your stock price by buybacks is easier said than done.

In fact according to the CAPM economic model, it is impossible. The assets of the company decrease by the money spent on buybacks, which matches the value of stock bought and destroyed. This should leave the price per remaining stock unchanged.

Sounds to me like the CAPM economic model is in need of revision. Buybacks are a common tool for increasing shareholder value and investor sentiment figures heavily in asset pricing.

There are a number of reasons why buybacks can increase prices. See https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-cor... for a list.

All are second order effects.

Ok as a general point, but those criticisms simply do not apply to Cooke. The company has done absolute gang busters both in products and fundamental performance, and that's what has driven up the stock price.