Michael Saylor, executive chairman of MicroStrategy, will present a Bitcoin treasury strategy to Microsoft’s Board of Directors before December 10. The revelation came during a X-space organized by asset manager VanEck, with Saylor, Matthew Sigel (Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck), Jan van Eck (CEO of VanEck) and US Senator Cynthia Lummis.
Can Saylor convince Microsoft about Bitcoin?
Matthew Sigel highlighted the upcoming shareholder vote at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) that would force the board to rate Bitcoin as a treasury investment. He asked Saylor whether shareholder proposals are effective in promoting the adoption of Bitcoin as a reserve asset, or whether there are alternative methods to catalyze greater adoption.
Saylor responded by endorsing shareholder activism as a legitimate approach. He revealed that the activists behind the proposal had contacted him to present it to the board. “I agreed to give a three-minute presentation, that’s all you’re allowed,” he said. Saylor plans to post this presentation online and deliver it to the board of directors.
He also announced that he offered to meet privately with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to discuss Bitcoin adoption. However, this offer was not accepted, prompting Saylor to proceed with the formal presentation to the board.
“I also offered to withdraw that proposal if Satya Nadella would meet with me. And I said, I would fly to wherever he is and meet him in confidence in his office for an hour to discuss, but that offer was not accepted. So you’ll see me put together the three-minute proposal for Microsoft, and it’ll be posted and we’ll send it to the board,” Saylor revealed.
Microsoft has scheduled its annual shareholder meeting for December 10, where an “Assessment of Investing in Bitcoin” will take place. will be on the agenda. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dated October 24, the company included this proposal as one of the voting items.
Despite the inclusion of the proposal, Microsoft’s Board of Directors formally did so recommended that shareholders vote against. In additional materials filed with the SEC on October 25, the board stated that the requested review is unnecessary because Microsoft management already considers Bitcoin within its broader investment strategy.
“Microsoft’s Global Treasury and Investment Services team is evaluating a broad range of investable assets to fund ongoing operations, including assets expected to provide diversification and inflation protection,” the filing said.
During the X Space, Saylor advocated a broader approach adoption by companies of Bitcoin as a treasury, not just at Microsoft but at major companies with significant cash reserves. He suggested that similar proposals should be on the agendas of companies such as Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Google and Meta. “They all have huge amounts of money. They all burn shareholder value,” he noted.
He argued that integrating Bitcoin into a company’s assets could lead to more stable and less risky stocks. Saylor explained about Microsoft: “Microsoft’s approach is that 98.5% of the enterprise value is used for quarterly profits. And 1.5% of the value of the shares consists of tangible assets. And it would be a much more stable stock and a much less risky stock if half of the stock’s enterprise value were based on tangible assets or property like Bitcoin.”
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $92,666.
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