General counsel Brad Smith appointed president at Microsoft

General counsel Brad Smith becomes first Microsoft president in a decade

Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, has been promoted to chief legal officer and appointed company president.

Smith, who has been in charge of the company's legal campaign to against the US government bid to extract data from Microsoft servers in Ireland, becomes the first president of the company since Rick Beluzzo resigned in 2002 - coincidentally, the year that Smith was appointed general counsel, having joined the software giant as long ago as 1993.

He was also part of Microsoft's senior legal leadership team that negotiated with the US Department of Justice following the late-1990s anti-trust case against Microsoft over the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows and anti-competitive practices.

In an email to staff, Nadella said that he expected Smith to take a more high-profile role, in "strengthening our external relationships and representing the company publicly" as well as working on initiatives regarding privacy, security, accessibility, environmental sustainability and digital inclusion, according to Bloomberg.

He continued: "Brad will work with me and others on the senior leadership team in the coming weeks to help us organize ourselves for success, identifying the right way to have impact on these cross-company initiatives."

As a result, Smith's team will assume more responsibilities over day-to-day legal matters currently handled directly by Smith.

His appointment is the latest in a number of managerial shifts at the top of Microsoft since Nadella, who joined Microsoft the year before Smith, was appointed CEO.