You won't be seeing President Bill Gates any time soon. The Microsoft chairman was in London this week as part of what seemed to be a farewell tour from his current role as he steps down from the company he founded to focus on his eminently respectable philanthropic interests.

Asked if he would ever be tempted to stand for President, he laughed: "I'm certainly not going to do it. I do work with politicians... I enjoy doing that... but my role is being full-time with the Foundation. There's a lot of reform and improvement that, by being off on the side and working with governments and development agencies and filling our unique role, I think that's the highest impact. But running for an election, worrying about the next election? I don't think I'll get into that."

That said, he did run a humorous video about his last day at the office which featured him pestering Hillary Clinton about being her running mate for vice president, and phoning Barrack Obama – who pretended not to know who Gates was (“Bill who? Bill Shatner from Star Trek?”). There were no similar pleas to Mitt Romney or John McCain – but then again it was a Republican administration that set the Justice Department hounds on Microsoft in the first place.

Leadership 'takeaways' were surprisingly thin on the ground at the £200-a-head CRM event. However, on the subject of ongoing investigations into Microsoft, his best advice to business leaders was: “Don't get sued – especially by your own government. And especially if it's unjust!”

Gates was adamant that Microsoft's longstanding dominance of its markets did not stifle competition. "People do have lots of choice in these things. [You can] choose to user older versions, choose to use alternative things. There are tons of things out there. [In the business space there's] IBM, Oracle, lots and lots of companies. [Competition] is there, it just doesn't get covered as much."

There were some pearls of wisdom on the ethics of doing business with certain regimes, notably China, and those central African states where human rights abuses are currently rife. His stance: it's better to be alive than to be free.

He argued that while technology could help to drive innovation – for example, the internet allowing individuals to view a wider world than their own – it was not his job, nor Microsoft's, to try to use it to force through democracy. Although people have short memories in politics, arch-rival Google had come to the same conclusion only recently. In business, perhaps, it too is better to be trading than to be free.

Nevertheless, Gates insisted that change would come in its own time and that refusing to get involved with dubious regimes was not necessarily going to assist them. Telling a poor African that he cannot have malaria medication, but he will soon have a vote would not have any positive impact, he rationalised. “It's always better to be alive,” he said.

That said, Gates is prepared to talk politics to promote the work of his Foundation. After hooking up with David Cameron at the World Economic Forum in Davos, this week he was nipping round to Number 10 for tea and photos with Gordon Brown.

It's well known that Gates had enormous influence over Tony Blair. In fact, it's suggested by some Whitehall insiders that Gates was indirectly responsible for the advent of the monstrous NHS National Programme for IT, having reportedly encouraged Blair to think big in terms of NHS IT modernisation. The paymaster for that ongoing nightmare was one Gordon Brown.

Smile, please!