Bill Gates and his wife Melinda announce their divorce
The couple separate after twenty-seven years of marriage, and twenty years of working together within their foundation, one of the most powerful in the world, for which they will continue to collaborate.
“After much thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we made the decision to end our marriage. It is with this simple sentence announcing their divorce that the joint statement from Bill and Melinda Gates begins, posted on their respective Twitter accounts on Monday, May 3.
The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, and his wife, who resides in Washington state, will divorce after twenty-seven years of marriage, and twenty years of working together within their foundation.
The Gates, who have three children, announced that they would continue to "work together at their foundation," the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which fights poverty and disease, but that they no longer believe they "can. evolve together as a couple ”.
Fourth richest man in the world
Bill Gates, now 65-year-old Microsoft co-founder, and his wife, 56, a former CEO of the computer giant, were silent about their reasons for separating. They pleaded with the public to give their families the "space and privacy" necessary to "begin to adjust to this new life."
Bill Gates is, according to the latest Forbes ranking, the fourth richest man in the world, with a fortune valued at 124 billion dollars (102 billion euros). It is placed behind two other Americans, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, and the French Bernard Arnault, and in front of the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.
While he made his fortune with Microsoft, he resigned as president in 2014 and now focuses on philanthropy. Solicited by many leaders, he has made multiple interventions since the start of the pandemic, against which his foundation has spent more than $ 1 billion, according to the New York Times. This visibility into an illness that fueled political tensions has made him a frequent target of conspiracy theories on social media.
The foundation he created with his wife is considered the largest private foundation in the world. It has spent some 53 billion dollars in twenty years, and employs nearly 1,600 people, according to its official website. Among its activities, it has partly contributed to the financing of World Africa since 2015 to support development and public health issues.
A meeting in New York in 1987
While they will continue to work together within their foundation, which they co-chair alongside Warren Buffett, their divorce could lead to changes in the way it is funded, some observers argued. In particular, it is unclear whether Mr. Gates will continue to fund him as regularly as he has done so far.
Bill and Melinda Gates met at a dinner party in New York City shortly after Melinda joined Microsoft in 1987. In a documentary released on Netflix in 2019, Inside Bill's Brain, the co-founder Microsoft explained that after dating for a year, they found themselves faced with the obligation to make a choice: "Either break up or get married." Bill had made a whiteboard list of "pros and cons of marriage," Melinda said with a laugh.
The Gates' divorce comes after the divorce of another multibillion-dollar couple, that of Jeff Bezos from his wife MacKenzie Scott in 2019. The separation of the latter was however announced after the publication of information on an extramarital affair of the founder from Amazon. MacKenzie Scott has since become the 22nd richest person on the planet and an influential philanthropist, donating some 6 billion in 2020 alone. She announced her remarriage last month.
In the case of the Gates, there was no recent news to suggest a separation, although Melinda Gates had spoken of tensions in the marriage, most notably in her book The Moment of Lift, released in 2019.
