Billionaires -- Top 500 Richest
https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/william-h-gates/
Bloomberg Billionaires Index
View profiles for each of the world’s 500 richest people, see the biggest movers, and compare fortunes or track returns.
#2 Bill Gates $98.6B
Random fact: Largest shareholder of Canada's biggest railroad operator.
Overview
Gates co-founded Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, and owns about 1 percent of the Redmond, Washington-based company. The rest of his fortune is managed through closely held Cascade Investment, which controls stakes in dozens of publicly traded companies, including Canadian National Railway, Deere and Ecolab.
As of Oct. 7, 2018:
Last change -$92.6M (-0.1%)
YTD change +$6.82B (+7.4%)
Industry Technology
Biggest asset Cash
Citizenship United States
Age 62
Wealth Self-made
Relative Value
Bill Gates's net worth of $98.6B can buy ...
81.9M
troy ounces of gold
1.17B
barrels of crude oil
... and is equivalent to ...
0.509%
of the GDP of the United States
1.91%
of the total wealth of the 500 richest people in the world
24.9%
of the top 100 U.S. college endowments
1,562%
of the top 200 U.S. executives’ total awarded compensation
6.09%
of U.S. existing home sales
1,606,931
times the median U.S. household income
Net Worth Summary
Cash
Private asset
Public asset
Misc. liabilities
Confidence rating:
The majority of Gates's fortune is derived from Cascade Investment, a holding company that was created with the proceeds of Microsoft stock sales and dividends.
Based on an analysis of Bloomberg data, Gates has sold more than $40 billion in stock and collected more than $11 billion in dividends since the software maker's initial public offering in 1986, including a $3.3 billion payout in 2004, which he donated to his philanthropic foundation.
The value of Cascade is based on an analysis of asset sales and purchases, taxes and market performance. Market performance is based on a hybrid of indexes that capture sectors including hedge funds, bonds and equities, and calculates a weighted average annual return of 7.5 percent since 1980. It includes the value of Cascade's investments in closely held businesses, including real estate (Four Seasons Hotels) and energy (Sapphire Energy). Cascade also owns stakes in dozens of public companies, including AutoNation and Canadian National Railway, which are valued individually using disclosed sharecounts.
He retains about 1.3 percent of Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, according to an August 2017 filing. Shares held by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable enterprise that supports poverty eradication, medical research and education initiatives, aren't included in his net worth calculation.
Bridgitt Arnold, a spokeswoman for Gates, said he declined to comment on his net worth.
Biography
Birthdate: 10/28/1955
Family: Married, 3 children
Education: President & Fellows of Harvard College, 1973-1975
Born to successful parents -- his father was a lawyer, his mother was president of the local United Way -- Gates developed an interest in computers shortly after his admittance to Seattle's Lakeside School.
After scoring a 1590 on his SATs (out of a possible 1600), he enrolled at Harvard University, where his Lakeside friend, Paul Allen, persuaded him to take a leave of absence to help him build an operating system for the Altair 8800, a new computer developed by Micro Instrumentation & Telemetry Systems. The result: Microsoft, now the world's largest software maker by revenue.
In 1994, Gates married Melinda French, a Microsoft employee whom he had met seven years earlier at a press event in New York. Six years later, after his Microsoft stake topped $100 billion, Gates stepped down as the company's chief executive and began focusing on philanthropic efforts. To date, he has donated more than $30 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which so far has given away $36.7 billion in grants to fight hunger, disease and poverty. He intends to give the majority of his wealth to charity, a commitment he reaffirmed by signing the Giving Pledge in 2010. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in November 2016.
Milestones
- 1955 William Henry Gates III is born in Seattle.
- 1975 Gates and Allen register the name Microsoft.
- 1981 Incorporates Microsoft in the state of Washington.
- 1985 Software maker releases the first consumer version of Windows.
- 1986 Microsoft completes IPO, one day after Oracle's public offering.
- 2000 Steps down as Microsoft chief executive officer.
- 2000 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is established.
- 2003 Microsoft pays its first dividend.
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