Microsoft Sold Its Apple Stock in 1997 for $550 Million. Today Those Shares Would Be Worth $200 Billion

If you were Bill Gates and Microsoft, would you have held on to your stock?

EXPERT OPINION BY JEFF HADEN @JEFF_HADEN

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.. Photos: Getty Images

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was hemorrhaging cash. “We were 90 days from going bankrupt,” Jobs said. The first thing he did was cut approximately 70 percent of the company’s current (and future) product line.

The next thing he needed to do? Persuade Microsoft to keep building new versions of Office for the Mac. Word and Excel had become........

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