Microsoft's juxta-Klaus

Jiří Paroubek and Martin Bursík aren't the only ones struggling to find a suitable candidate to put against Václav Klaus. So is Bill Gates. That's right, Microsoft wants its Czech GM to be someone with the stature to be a dignified counterpart to the president, according to Microsoft's head of Europe, Jan Mühlfeit. He told Ekonom that Microsoft has huge demands on its GM, and that's why it's taking so long to find someone. This is the closest Microsoft has come to admitting that Michal Čupa was sacked as local GM earlier this year, instead of the official version of a promotion. If he were a suitable juxta-Klaus, he wouldn't have been shipped off to a one-man unit in Siberia (oops, Moscow), esp. when the pickings are so slim in Prague. Word is that a desperate Microsoft will now go for an imported candidate, Jane Gilson. Kind of a Jan Švejnar type, except that he's well-known and speaks Czech. [Czech Republic general manager Russia]