One event that rocked the global tech and business worlds yesterday was Microsoft founder Bill Gates announcing a divorce from his wife of 27 years, Melinda Gates. The divorce marked an end to a partnership that saw them build one of the world’s foremost philanthropic entities, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

• As expected, Gates’ divorce announcement brought about speculations on how his huge monetary fortune, reported at $145bn by Bloomberg, will be split between the couple. Already, such speculations are starting to give way to facts as the Gateses appear to have begun splitting their fortune substantially.

Details:

• Cascade Investment, the personal investment vehicle of Bill Gates, transferred $1.8bn of equities to Melinda’s ownership on the day their divorce was announced, SEC filings show. The equities transferred were huge blocks of just two companies; car dealer AutoNation and Canadian National Railway Co.

• Bill Gates handed over to Melinda 2.94 million shares of AutoNation worth $309mn and 14.1 million shares of Canadian National Railway Co. worth about $1.5bn at current prices. The $1.8bn transfer adds up to less than 2% of Gates’ reported fortune of $145bn.

• When they announced their divorce, the Gateses made no public statement about the division of their assets, though a divorce filing indicated that they asked a judge in their resident state of Washington to divide it based on the terms of an undisclosed separation contract.

Highlights:

• Bill’s divorce from Melinda evokes similarities to that of his fellow Washington billionaire pal Jeff Bezos, who divorced a 25-year marriage with MacKenzie Scott in 2019. In Bezos’ case, he handed over a block of Amazon shares then worth $38bn to his ex-wife.

• Although Gates made his large fortune by founding Microsoft, he’s divested heavily out of the company into numerous other assets and currently holds a stake of less than 1% in the company he founded. Through Cascade Investment, he has interests spanning real estate, hospitality, and energy as well as valuable stakes in many public companies.

• The $1.8bn equities transfer from Bill to Melinda is the first item of their asset split to be revealed publicly. Apart from that, it’s possible that other asset transfers have taken place out of the public eye, especially in regard to non-public assets.

Correction: We made a correction to indicate that the assets were transferred on the day Bill and Melinda’s divorce was announced rather than a day after.

Photo credit: jurvetson, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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