“It was the $50 million phone call.” That’s how Kevin Harrang refers to the call he received last spring from his CFO to inform him how much the legal department’s budget had to be cut. The deputy general counsel of law and corporate affairs for Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. knew his department would be facing budget reductions, but that number shocked him.
“I said, ‘OK, where did $50 million come from?’” Harrang says. “But, of course, numbers you get from your finance department are about spreading cost reductions, and so it was our job to figure out where to look for savings.”
