MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor will present a bitcoin treasury strategy to Microsoft's board of directors by December 10. The revelation occurred during a <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/bleighky/status/1859001292733247898″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>Space x hosted by investment management firm VanEck, featuring Saylor, Matthew Sigel (VanEck Head of Digital Asset Research), Jan van Eck (VanEck CEO), and US Senator Cynthia Lummis.
Can Saylor convince Microsoft for bitcoin?
Matthew Sigel highlighted the upcoming Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) shareholder vote that would force the board to evaluate bitcoin as a treasury asset. He asked Saylor if the shareholder proposals are effective in promoting the adoption of bitcoin as a reserve asset or if 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 do a three-minute presentation; that's all that's allowed,” he said. Saylor intends to post this presentation online and deliver it to the board of directors.
He also revealed 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 a 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 where he is and meet him in confidence in his office for an hour to discuss, but we were, that offer was not accepted. “Then you will see me putting together the three-minute proposal for Microsoft and we will publish it and send it to the board,” Saylor revealed.
Microsoft has scheduled its annual shareholder meeting for December 10, where a “bitcoin Investment Review” will be on the agenda. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on October 24, the company included this proposal among the voting items.
Despite the proposal's inclusion, Microsoft's board of directors has formally recommended that shareholders vote against it. In supplemental materials filed with the SEC on October 25, the board stated that the requested evaluation is unnecessary because Microsoft management already considers bitcoin within its broader investment strategy.
“Microsoft's Global Treasury and Investment Services team evaluates a wide range of investable assets to fund ongoing operations, including assets that are expected to provide diversification and inflation protection,” the document notes.
During x Space, Saylor advocated for broader corporate adoption of bitcoin as a treasury asset, not just at Microsoft but at large corporations 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 cash. “They are all burning value for shareholders,” he commented.
He argued that integrating bitcoin into a company's assets could lead to a more stable and less risky stock. Speaking about Microsoft, Saylor explained: “Microsoft's approach is that 98.5% of enterprise value is leveraged into quarterly earnings. And 1.5% of the stock value is tangible assets. And they would be much more stable and much less risky stocks if half of the stock's enterprise value was based on tangible assets or properties like bitcoin.”
At the time of publication, btc was trading at $92,666.
Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
