For the betterment of their own selves, their well being and the well being of the society & the world, sometimes a couple splits.
They part ways.
This does apply to the “T” for arguably, the most influential couple in the planet, Bill-Melinda Gates, Opines Hirav Shah, Eminent Business Astrologer & Astro-Business Strategist.
Meanwhile, Hirav Shah now explains, if Bill Gates would still rank in the “top richest people” list, which the entire world must also pondering…..
Birthdate of Bill Gates : Self-made billionaires, like Bill Gates(Born on 28 October, 1955), are distinguished from the average business leaders in one respect. It’s the way they look at the world. Their unusual perspective allows them to turn good ideas into great businesses.
Bill Gates is in his 66th year.
Birthdate of Melinda Gates : Melinda Ann Gates (Born on 15 August, 1964) DBE is an American philanthropist and a former general manager at Microsoft. In 2000, she and her husband Bill Gates co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charitable organization as of 2015.
Melinda Gates is in her 57th year.
Most self-made billionaires practice six habits of mind as they apply to ideas, time, action, risk, leadership and persistence, Tells Hirav Shah.
If you don’t persist to achieve your goals, you won’t achieve goals – simple as that!
Bill Gates persisted with his goal of building up Microsoft, and because he persisted – he succeeded. He then found new goals to persist towards and by sticking with them, he has succeeded. He had plenty of other goals that he did not continue to persist on, because he understood that these were not where he wanted to go.
But, divorce is a path which the man wanted to go. Yes, Bill & Melinda Gates split up, and this has become the talk of the world today. This could spell complicated decisions for the family when it comes to handling the wealth they have accumulated, Opines Shah.
It’s time to now find out if the man will still remain as one of the planet’s richest, post their fall-out…
What We Know about Bill Gates and Melinda Gates
1. Bill Gates led Microsoft as CEO from its founding with Paul Allen in 1975 until 2000, leaving Steve Ballmer to run the company, while Bill Gates became chairman and chief software architect.
2.Came 2008, when Gates gave his day-to-day role at the company to spend more time on the nonprofit “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation“.
3.Last year saw Bill Gates stepping down from
the board of Microsoft, as the pandemic became a negative force around the world.
Alongside Melinda Gates, he began spending more time on the foundation.The two are co-chairs and trustees of the foundation, which launched in 2000.
4.Bill and Melinda Gates both worked at Microsoft. She had been a general manager at the software company, where she worked on products such as the Encarta encyclopedia.
5.The two met at a dinner for Microsoft employees in 1987. “It took him quite a few months before he asked me out,” Melinda Gates later said. Bill Gates had weighed the pros and cons on a blackboard, and in 1994 the couple were married in Hawaii.
6.Financial details of the Gates parting ways are not yet clear. Bill Gates owns 1.37% of Microsoft’s outstanding shares, which are worth more than $26 billion, according to FactSet. The couple were creators, along with Warren Buffett, of the Giving Pledge, a program that requires participants to give away more than half of their wealth.
7.At one point the couple decided to move $20 billion worth of Microsoft stock to the foundation as they sought to increase their commitment to philanthropy, Bill Gates wrote in a 2019 blog post. Today the foundation has more than $51 billion in assets, according to a tax filing, making it one of the world’s wealthiest foundations.
8.”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.”
9.In 2015 the two began pursuing areas they were interested in. Bill Gates established Breakthrough Energy, an initiative to slow climate change that includes a venture arm, and Melinda Gates created Pivotal Ventures, a company that makes investments to foster equality.
10.For Valentine’s Day in 2020, Bill Gates posted a photo on Instagram showing him standing with his arm around Melinda Gates. “I couldn’t ask for a better partner on this journey,” the caption said.
11.Each year for more than a decade the Gates have published a letter about their foundation work. In the latest one, published in January, they reflected on the impact of the pandemic, beyond supporting the development of vaccines. “For us, the days became a blur of video meetings, troubling news alerts, and microwaved meals,” they wrote.
12.Bill Gates is the world’s fourth richest person, behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, LVMH’s Bernard Arnault and Tesla’s Elon Musk, according to Forbes.
13.The announcement comes two years after Bezos said he and his wife, MacKenzie, were getting divorced. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are among the world’s richest people, and Amazon and Microsoft compete in the cloud computing business. Amazon said earlier this year that Bezos would be stepping down from his post as CEO and that cloud chief Andy Jassy would succeed him.
Challenging Stretch for Bill Gates and Melinda Gates
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’t necessarily mean the fortune would be split in half.
“It is not a mandatory 50-50, the courts can award more or less, depending on what is just and equitable. The public might never find out how they split the fortune, because it can be hidden behind the private contract.” – Predicts Hirav Shah.
According to the official statement issued by the couple, they have made the decision to end their marriage after a great deal of thought and a lot of work on their relationship.
“We have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives,” they said in the statement.
The statement further said that both Melinda and Bill Gates will continue to share a belief in that mission and would continue to work together at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charitable foundation.
Final Thoughts: Lastly, the most powerful couple on the planet will split property according to separation contract as they had NO prenup.
With $146 bn at stake, it will be difficult for Bill Gates to rank in the top richest people list, post divorce, Concludes Hirav Shah.
Photo Credit
World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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