Tue 04 May 2021:
Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a divorce following nearly three decades of marriage, the couple announced on Monday.
“After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” Bill and Melinda Gates said in a statement. “Over the last 27 years, 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.”
In her divorce petition, Melinda Gates described her marriage to former Microsoft CEO as ‘irretrievably broken’.
The billionaire couple have three children and jointly run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Melinda, now 56, joined Microsoft as a product manager in 1987, and the two sat together at a business dinner that year in New York.
They began dating, but as Bill told a Netflix documentary: “We cared a lot for each other and there were only two possibilities: either, we were going to break up or we were going to get married.”
The billionaire couple have three children and jointly run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The organisation has spent billions fighting causes such as infectious diseases and encouraging vaccinations in children.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 3, 2021
- The couple established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 in Seattle
- The foundation focuses primarily on public health, education and climate change
- Its grants included some $1.75bn to vaccine initiatives and research during the Covid-19 pandemic
- In 2019, the foundation had net assets of more than $43bn
- Bill and Melinda Gates pumped more than $36bn into the foundation between 1994 and 2018
source: Reuters news agency
Bill Gates is the fourth wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, and is worth $124bn (£89bn).
The couple said they would continue their work at the Gates Foundation, but said “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
Bill Gates is the fourth richest person in the world with a net worth of over $130 billion, according to Forbes. He has donated some $35.8 billion in Microsoft stock to his foundation.
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