Activist investor who wants Office on iPad joins Microsoft board

Computerworld - Microsoft yesterday added G. Mason Morfit, president of ValueAct Capital, to its board of directors, making good on its part of the deal it struck with the activist shareholder last year.

"We've had the opportunity to work with Mason over the past six months, and we look forward to working with him more closely as a member of the board," said John Thompson, Microsoft's chairman, in a statement Tuesday. "Mason brings valuable insights given his financial background, his extensive experience as a public company director and his perspective as a significant Microsoft shareholder."

What Thompson did not say was that Microsoft's hand was forced. To keep San Francisco-based ValueAct from launching a proxy fight last year, Microsoft offered a board seat to the investment firm and said that Morfit could regularly meet with "selected Microsoft directors and management to discuss a range of significant business issues" before he took his place at the table.

In return, ValueAct promised not to acquire more than 4.9% of Microsoft's outstanding shares, not to launch a proxy battle, and not to "make any statement or announcement that constitutes an ad hominem attack on, or otherwise disparages or causes to be disparaged the Company or its affiliates or any of its current or former officers or directors," according to a late August filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Morfit was the first Microsoft director appointed under duress, not by the Redmond, Wash., company's choice. As of February, ValueAct owned less than 1% of Microsoft. At today's current share price, ValueAct's holdings were worth about $2.5 billion, far less than any of the top 10 institutional investors, such as Vanguard ($14.2 billion) and State Street ($13.1 billion).

ValueAct got onto the Microsoft board by being the proverbial squeaky wheel. ValueAct's CEO, Jeffrey Ubben, who was linked to calls for former CEO Steve Ballmer's ouster, had agitated for a seat on the board. Like many shareholders, ValueAct had expressed concern over several major mistakes by Microsoft, including falling behind in smartphones and tablets. At an investor conference last year, Ubben also called on Microsoft to make its lucrative Office software franchise more widely available on non-Windows platforms, including Apple's iPad and Google's Android mobile operating system.

Some observers expect Microsoft to launch an iPad Office suite this year, perhaps as early as the first half of 2014. For its part, Microsoft has said next to nothing publicly, although last month, Tami Reller, the company's marketing chief -- who is now on her way out the door -- seemed to hedge on a previous promise to bring Office to the iPad.

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Adjustments to Common Core in Florida Approved by State School Board

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The Florida State Board of Education unanimously voted on Feb. 18 to alter the Common Core State Standards in the Sunshine State. The suggested alterations to the way the standards will play out in classrooms were presented to the state board by the Florida education department last month, and all of those suggestions were adopted by the state board. The department reviewed proposed revisions and public comments on the common core before making its own list of suggested tweaks. 

As my colleague Catherine Gewertz wrote last month, the revisions include additional math standards related to calculus. That latter change, one which was highlighted during public discussion earlier this year, isn't an alteration of the standards per se—it's the addition of new standards. The revisions also include a requirement that students demonstrate beginner's skills in cursive writing, a divisive issue surounding the common core. 

Other changes include requiring the use of money when teaching certain concepts related to decimals, and scaling back expectations in terms of students' ability to explain the way ideas are transmitted through texts and illustrations. 

You can see this example of a new standard on page 5 of this document detailing the changes to the math standards; use this link to see the changes made to the English/language arts standards. It's unclear if these changes will quell fears about the standards in Florida, including the belief that the common core, which was developed at the direction of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, are an attempt by the federal government to claim more power over education. (Gewertz also touched in this issue last month when the proposed revisions were made public).

Notably, Florida Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart said she is "on track" to select a new common-core aligned assessment for Florida, after the state officially distanced itself from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers last year. Last month, Stewart told lawmakers that Florida will select a new assessment in March.  

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