Is there a "Balmer discount" on shares of Microsoft?

Rumours that the top management of Microsoft began discussing the shift from his post Steve Ballmer CEO. The reason for this was a bad Dynamics Microsoft shares recently, because of which even Apple has pulled ahead in terms of capitalization.

Microsoft has a good financial results: an increase in revenue from Xbox, record sales of Windows 7, accumulating more than $20 billion in cash in the bank, but shares some reason feel worse than the market. According to some shareholders, capitalization effect "Balmer discount", which crushes the course. If the CEO will leave, the market may perceive it positively.

Talk about leaving Ballmer appeared after the recent corporate conference Microsoft Global Experience in Atlanta, which brought together 10 thousand employees Microsoft. Many of them had the impression that Steve is not the one he had lost his inspiration, and his speeches do not light as before. Some participants wrote about it in twitter, and other privately shared their impressions that Steve is the last conference of Microsoft Global Experience. The next year it will be gone.

Experts on condition of anonymity, said that with its products such as Kin, Bing and Zune, Microsoft looks "is not relevant in Silicon Valley".

Many agree that Ballmer is under pressure. However, his departure, there are several obstacles. In the first, Steve enjoys the unconditional trust of the Board of Directors. Secondly, in his place has not yet seen a worthy candidate. After the departure of Bill Gates was a lot of options, but now they do not, and post-CEO Microsoft, according to some, more like a dictatorship. It is also connected with a specific style of leadership inherent Ballmer, who is known for its rigidity and expressiveness. There is reliable evidence that in 2005, Ballmer threw a chair and used obscene language in his office when he learned that one of the programmers moving to Google.