{"id":487667,"date":"2021-05-04T07:09:52","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T05:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=487667"},"modified":"2021-05-04T07:10:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T05:10:45","slug":"bill-and-melinda-gates-to-divorce-with-146-billion-at-stake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/487667\/bill-and-melinda-gates-to-divorce-with-146-billion-at-stake\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill and Melinda Gates to divorce with $146 billion at stake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bill and Melinda Gates, who for decades have overseen one of history\u2019s greatest fortunes and philanthropic operations, said they plan to divorce.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement Monday that the couple is splitting after 27 years of marriage has the power to ripple through the technology industry, a vast portfolio of business and real estate holdings and into the realms of global health, climate change policy and social issues including equality for women.<\/p>\n<p>The pair, who command an estimated $146 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, made no public hint of their financial plans, though they emphasized that they will cooperate on continuing their philanthropy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,\u201d the two said in a brief statement posted on Twitter. \u201cWe have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"und\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/padmHSgWGc\">pic.twitter.com\/padmHSgWGc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bill Gates (@BillGates) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BillGates\/status\/1389316412259270657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 3, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Bill Gates, the 65-year-old co-founder of Microsoft Corp, ranks as the world\u2019s fourth-richest person. Melinda Gates, 56, is a former Microsoft manager who\u2019s gained international prominence co-running the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation. It\u2019s already given away more than $50 billion.<\/p>\n<p>They will remain co-chairs and trustees of the foundation, a spokesperson for the organization wrote in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo changes to their roles or the organization are planned,\u201d according to the statement. \u201cThey will continue to work together to shape and approve foundation strategies, advocate for the foundation\u2019s issues, and set the organization\u2019s overall direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The couple filed for divorce in King County on Monday, an online search of court dockets shows. They have a separation agreement, according to a copy of a divorce petition posted by the website TMZ, which doesn\u2019t elaborate on the terms. It calls their marriage \u201cirretrievably broken.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the second bombshell divorce among the uppermost ranks of the world\u2019s richest people in recent years, following the 2019 separation announcement of Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott.<\/p>\n<p>That split, which divided the couple\u2019s stake in Amazon.com Inc, immediately made MacKenzie one of the world\u2019s richest people. In the months that followed, she became one of the most influential philanthropists in the world, giving away billions of dollars to often overlooked causes among billionaire donors.<\/p>\n<p>But for Bill and Melinda Gates, separating assets potentially poses a bigger challenge than dividing the Bezos fortune, which was largely concentrated in Amazon stock.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Gates\u2019s net worth originated with Microsoft but shares of the software-maker now probably make up less than 20% of his assets. He\u2019s shifted much of his stake into the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation over the years and his exact stake hasn\u2019t been disclosed since he left Microsoft\u2019s board last year.<\/p>\n<p>Gates\u2019s biggest asset is Cascade Investment, a holding company he created with the proceeds of Microsoft stock sales and dividends that\u2019s run by Michael Larson. Through Cascade, Gates has interests in real estate, energy and hospitality as well as stakes in dozens of public companies, including Canadian National Railway and Deere &amp; Co.<\/p>\n<p>Monica Mazzei, a divorce attorney and a partner at Sideman &amp; Bancroft LLP in San Francisco, said the big question concerning the couple\u2019s foundation and family office is to what extent they plan on working together going forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven in the most amicable divorces I\u2019ve seen, the preference has been to split the foundation in two so that there\u2019s more autonomy and less intermingling,\u201d she said. The same principle applies to family offices, where the investments could be divvied up into two separate pots.<\/p>\n<p><strong>`Challenging Stretch\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Washington law may offer some clues to how they divide their assets. As a community property state, anything acquired during a marriage is considered equally owned by both partners, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the fortune would be split in half.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is not a mandatory 50-50,\u201d said Janet George, a family lawyer in Washington with the firm McKinley Irvin. \u201cThe courts can award more or less, depending on what is just and equitable.\u201d The public might never find out how they split the fortune, because it can be hidden behind private contracts, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Washington mandates a 90-day cooling off period from the day a couple initially files for divorce before the process can be finalized by a judge. The couple\u2019s divorce filing &#8211; listing Melinda as the petitioner and Bill as joining, with both of them signing &#8211; asks the court to dissolve their marriage on a date noted in their separation agreement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been a challenging stretch of time for our whole family,\u201d their eldest daughter, Jennifer, wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>Their youngest child is 18.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Becoming Philanthropists<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The pair met in New York in the 1980s, early into Melinda\u2019s time at Microsoft.<\/p>\n<p>When deciding whether to marry, Bill made a pro-and-con list on a whiteboard &#8211; Melinda related how she walked into his bedroom to find him tabulating various factors in the Netflix documentary series \u201cInside Bill\u2019s Brain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The couple\u2019s philanthropy has always been deeply rooted in their relationship and marriage. The day before they wed in Hawaii, Bill\u2019s mother, Mary, who had been trying to convince him to dramatically increase his charity, gave Melinda a letter which closed with the words \u201cFrom those to whom much is given, much is expected.\u201d Mary Gates died several months later.<\/p>\n<p>But it was on a trip to Africa during their engagement that the couple decided they would become serious philanthropists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe fell in love with everything we saw but it\u2019s really not at all trite to say that we really fell in love with the people,\u201d Melinda said at a Salesforce event in 2016. \u201cIt just started us on this series of questions of sort of saying to ourselves, \u2018What is going on here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Later on in the trip, the couple filled out a marriage questionnaire to make sure they had the same values. That\u2019s when they decided \u201cthe vast majority of resources from Microsoft would go back to society,\u201d Melinda said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was an easy discussion. We just thought it would be later in our lives when we got to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/486649\/the-jobs-that-south-africans-are-developing-new-skills-for\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The jobs that South Africans are developing new skills for<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill and Melinda Gates, who for decades have overseen one of history\u2019s greatest fortunes and philanthropic operations, said they plan to divorce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":487669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[657,26,169],"class_list":["post-487667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-amazon","tag-headline","tag-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487677,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487667\/revisions\/487677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}