IS GATES A BULLY, A NERD OR BOTH?

Is William H. Gates, founder of the world’s most powerful software company, a bully? That’s how Washington antitrust lawyer David Boies has been portraying the founder of Microsoft Corp. since the U.S. Justice Department launched its case against his company last Oct. 19.

The trial, which is expected to conclude next month, hangs on whether Mr. Gates used his company’s leading position to intimidate other software producers and distributors. Competitors like Sun Microsystems Inc., which produces the Java software widely used on the Internet, have accused the Seattle behemoth of monopolizing the market by making its own software Microsoft-specific, and, thus, not interoperable with theirs.

Fact is, though, no one seems all that concerned about whether Mr. Gate’s is found by the government to be an innovator or a robber baron.

Jeff Van Harte, for one, the San Francisco-based manager of Transamerica’s $240 million large growth Premier Equity fund, has more than 5% of its assets invested in Microsoft – and no plans to change that position because of the antitrust trial. If the government were to break up the company, says Mr. Harte, then he’d happily invest in the numerous companies that would be spun out of the deal.

The Street seems to agree with Mr. Harte. Microsoft’s stock was at $59 on Dec. 23, 1997. A year later, it was trading around $140.