Melinda Gates Set To Become One Of The World's Wealthiest Women Following Divorce

Melinda has become a billionaire on her own following divorce from billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. 

After the pair, who'd been married for 27 years announced their divorce, via a Twitter post from the Bill Gates official account, SEC filings showed that Melinda received about $2.4 billion in securities that same Monday. This transfer was made through American holding and investment company, Cascade Investment, controlled by Bill Gates and used to manage all his investments, and has put Melinda's net worth at about $2.4 billion. This means Bill is now worth $2.4 billion less, with his worth now at $128.1, from the $130.4 it was at - still an enormous amount of wealth considering that he's still the world's fourth-richest man.

More than half of Bill Gates's fortune is held in assets outside his holding of Microsoft shares, where he has a stake of just 1%.

Melinda Gates now owns 14.1 million shares of Canadian National Railway Co. worth about $1.5 billion, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing dated May 3. She also is the owner of 2.94 million shares of the largest automotive reseller in the United States, AutoNation Inc., worth $309 million.

Other shares she received include 25.8 million shares of Mexico-based Coca-Cola Femsa worth $120 million and 155.4 million shares of Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa SA, which are worth $386 million, according to SEC filings. 

While the terms of the divorce settlement aren't clear, it is apparent that this wealth transfer is some sort of divorce settlement. The couple has been said to have not signed a prenuptial agreement.

Bill and Melinda run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which they founded in 2000, the largest private foundation in the world which has donated about $50 billion in aid to developing countries. In 2019, they transferred $20 billion worth of Microsoft stock to the Foundation, which has yielded over $51 billion in assets. Last year, the foundation provided $1.8bn for emergency coronavirus medical supplies, PPE, and vaccines – and $2bn has been earmarked to try and wipe out malaria. The foundation also has a goal to completely wipe off polio and has made considerable progress.

Bill, who's 69, is the founder of Microsoft, one of the biggest software companies in the world, popularly known for Windows. He is one of the biggest landowners in the United States with a real estate portfolio worth about $166 million, including a private island in Belize worth $25 million called Grand Bogue Caye.

His official home in Washington is a 66,000-square-foot lakeside mansion worth about $65 million, and he owns a 30-acre estate in Wellington, Florida, worth an estimated $55 million.

In California, he is said to own two properties: one in Del Mar valued at about $20 million, and another in Indian Wells valued at about $1 million.

He also reportedly owns a collection of sports cars worth about $650,000, and it includes a Porsche 911, a Jaguar XJ6, a Porsche Carrera Cabriolet 964, a 1988 Porsche 959 Coupe, and a Ferrari 348.

He also has an extensive art collection worth an estimated $130 million, with works by Leonardo da Vinci, Andrew Wyeth, and Winslow Homer.

Apart from his shares in Microsoft, which has been pegged at approximately $26.1 billion, Bill's stake in his investment company, Cascade Investments is worth about $29.9 billion. He has shares in numerous companies including Deere & Company, where his shares are worth $12 billion, estimated; Canadian National Railway, where his shares are worth about $11 billion; and Diageo, where his shares are worth $1.6 billion. 

If half of Bill Gates's net worth is given to Melinda, as is usually done in divorce cases without a prenup, Melissa could take about $65 billion of the $130 billion Bill is worth, making her the second-wealthiest woman in the world. This will put her just behind Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the owner of cosmetics giant, L'Oreal, whose inherited fortune is worth around $83bn.

Last year, MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon's founder and world's richest man, jumped to the top of the richest women list, after her divorce from Jeff Bezos after 25 years of marriage. The divorce settlement of $60 billion, out of Bezos' $185 billion, made MacKenzie the fourth-richest woman in the world and the eighteenth richest person alive.