News

Microsoft Board Creates Antitrust Compliance Committee

• By Scott Bekker
• 11/11/2002

Exactly one week later, on Friday, Microsoft's board passed a resolution establishing an Antitrust Compliance Committee, which is charged with executing the duties of the final judgment related to compliance.

The judge's order called for Microsoft to establish the compliance committee and appoint three members of its board who are not current or former Microsoft employees to the committee within 30 days.

The chairman of the compliance committee will be James I. Cash, a professor at Harvard Business School and a member of Microsoft's board since June 2001. Cash will be joined on the committee by Microsoft board members Raymond Gilmartin and Ann McLaughlin Korologos. Both Gilmartin and Korologos joined the board after Jan. 1, 2000.

Gilmartin is chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co. Korologos is a former U.S. secretary of labor in the Reagan administration and was chair of the Aspen Institute. She is also a senior advisor at Benedetto, Gartland & Co., a private investment banking company.

Board chairman Bill Gates and board members Steve Ballmer and Jon Shirley were ineligible as current or former Microsoft employees. The other board members are Seattle luminary William G. Reed Jr., who has been on the board since 1987 and David Marquardt, the venture capitalist who helped Microsoft with its IPO.

One of the first tasks of the Compliance Committee will be to comply with the final judgment by hiring a compliance officer who will report to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.