IIRC, IBM are still reasonably big on R&D, aren't they?
Also, investor-wise people were happy with what he did. A thriving company doing i-have-no-idea-what is a better investment than a sinking mainframe company.
IBM is big on R&D in India...and squeezing money out of customers for projects they can't build anymore. I work for Microsoft, I don't want to work for IBM.
Whatever you think about Microsoft, IBM is just a worse experience from an employee perspective. I did two stints at IBM as an intern, the first in Boca (!!) and the second at Hawthorne. IBM Research is almost dead, with most of the researchers having moved on to academia and Google NYC. I work for MSR(A), which is still a very good research lab and probably the last big industrial one.
Also, investor-wise people were happy with what he did. A thriving company doing i-have-no-idea-what is a better investment than a sinking mainframe company.