Wat an idiot bill gates is..
Inside Bill and Melinda’s gates marriage
The couple did not sign a pre nup before they were married. Picture: Scott Olson / Getty Images North America / AFP
Source:AFP
The former couple announced their split over three decades after their romance blossomed at Microsoft, the company he co-founded that made him a billionaire.
The former couple
met at Microsoft in 1987 after Melinda started working there as a product manager, hitting it off when they sat next to each other at a work dinner. Melinda said it took him quite a few months to ask her out.
The two married in Hawaii in 1994, seven years after meeting. He was 38 at the time and she was 29, and the couple went on to have three children together: Jennifer, 25, Rory, 21, and Phoebe, 18.
Mr Gates, 65, is the fourth richest person in the world, and is estimated to be worth $US130.5 billion ($A168 billion), according to
Forbes, after he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire when Microsoft went public in 1986.
Bloomberg’s Billionaire’s Index values Mr Gate’s fortune even higher at $US145.8 ($A187.9 billion). The couple’s divorce comes after 27 years of marriage.
Bill and Melinda Gates are one of the world's wealthiest couples, with an estimated net worth of at least $A168 billion. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America/AFP
Source:AFP
Casual start to a long marriage
When the pair met, they reportedly shared a love of puzzles, while Melinda enjoyed beating Bill at maths games, although the relationship wasn’t serious at the start.
“She had other boyfriends, and I had Microsoft,” said Mr Gates.
“We were like, ‘Hey we are not really serious about each other, are we? We are not going to demand each other’s time.’”
“I was new to Microsoft, there were a lot of men there, and you are still looking around,” Mrs Gates added.
When Melinda fell pregnant with their first child, Bill was shocked when she declared she was not going to continue working at Microsoft and would stay at home to be a full time mum.
She said she didn’t have an example of working mothers while growing up in Dallas, although her mum led a small real estate investment set up by her parents.
“The other thing that played into it – I mean, we have to be honest: Bill was the CEO of Microsoft, right? That is a hard-charging tech industry. That was a very fast-growing company.
“I kept saying to him, ‘But somebody has to be home. If we want the values that we both believe in as a couple for the kids, somebody has to be home to instil those values,’” she told
Business Insider Australia in 2019.
“But then my view changed over time when I felt like I had created the environment where I could give my kids privacy and let them grow up to be themselves. We had the values, we had people around us who were also imparting those same values that we had. Then I felt, like, ‘OK, I do want to work, and I will be a working mum.’”
Bil and Melinda Gates with their three children. Picture: Instagram @jenniferkgates
Source:Instagram
Bill Gates with his daughter Jennifer when she was younger. Picture: Instagram @jenniferkgates
Source:Instagram
Throughout the marriage, Melinda said Bill and her would always do the dishes together after dinner.
“In the case of Melinda, it is a truly equal partner,” Bill Gates said in the 2019 Netflix documentary
Inside Bill’s Brain. “She’s a lot like me in that she is optimistic and she is interested in science.
“She is better with people than I am. She’s a tiny bit less hardcore about knowing, you know, immunology, than I am.”
Just last year on Valentine’s Day, Bill had posted a picture of the two of them with the caption “I couldn’t ask for a better partner on this journey.”
Known for their philanthropy, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda attend to a child as they meet members of the Mushar community at Jamsot Village near Patna, India, in 2011. Picture: Aftab Alam Siddiqui/AP
Source:AAP
Two of the most influential philanthropists
The former couple’s charitable organisation the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was set up in 2000, has spent $US53.8 billion ($A69 billion) on philanthropic projects since starting.
Mr Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in 2008 to focus on the foundation and left the tech giant’s board in May 2020.
When announcing the divorce, the pair said they will continue to work together on the foundation, which aims to improve global health, combat climate change, bolster US education, and create equal opportunities for people around the world.
Last year, the foundation pledged $US1.75 billion ($A2.25 billion) over two years to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since January 2021, the couple have given over $US29 billion ($A37 billion) to philanthropic causes, according to Forbes, while the foundation has a trust endowment of almost $US50 billion ($A64 billion).
Mrs Gates, 56, has degrees in computer science and economics as well as an MBA. She spent 10 years working at Microsoft before leaving to focus “on her family and philanthropic work”, according to the foundation’s website.
She said she loved working at Microsoft because “we were changing the world”, but she found the culture “aggressive” and two years in she questioned whether she wanted to stay with the company, reported
Business Insider Australia. She decided to create her own culture and see what happened.
Jennifer Gates with her mum Melinda. Picture: Instagram @jenniferkgates
Source:Instagram
The former couple are a powerhouse in the philanthropy world and dividing up assets may be hard as much of the fortune is tied up in their foundation. Picture: Ludovic Marin/AFP
Source:AFP
Since leaving Microsoft and raising her children, she has launched an investment company that backs social progress projects, called Pivotal Ventures, and also wrote a book called
The Moment of Lift about inspirational women she has met through her charity work.
It also documented her childhood, life and private struggles as the wife of a high profile billionaire.
The power of breaking poverty was a major theme of the book.
“Poverty is not being able to protect your family,” she wrote. “Poverty is not being able to save your children when mothers with more money could.
“And because the strongest instinct of a mother is to protect her children, poverty is the most disempowering force on earth. The most unjust thing is for children to die because their parents are too poor.”
They liked to watch the tennis together. Picture: Matthew Stockman/AFP
Source:AFP
How the money will be divided
The former couple are not the first high profile billionaire husband and wife to break up.
Amazon billionaire Jezz Bezos announced his separation from MacKenzie Scott in 2019, with a settlement of $US32 billion reached at the time, mainly made up of the tech giant’s stock.
But dividing their assets may be more difficult when it comes to the Gates fortune as most of Bill’s money is tied up with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to the
Australian Financial Review.
The Microsoft founder also owns a holding company, called Cascade Investments, which has interests in real estate, energy and hospitality as well as stakes in public companies such as Canadian National Railway and tractor-maker Deere & Co.
He created Breakthrough Energy, an initiative to slow climate change in 2015.
Forbes reports that Bill owns over just 1 per cent of shares in Microsoft, which are reportedly worth more than $26 billion.
