Billionaire benefactors Bill and Melinda Gates announced on Monday on Twitter that they have decided to divorce but pledged to continue working together to lead one of the world’s largest private charitable foundations.
The couple have been married for 27 years and have three children together.
Mr Gates, 65, who cofounded Microsoft and is ranked fourth on Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest, and his wife Melinda French Gates, 56, established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in a bid to give away billions of dollars.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has become one of the most powerful and influential forces in global public health, spending more than $50 billion over the past two decades to bring a business approach to combating poverty and disease.
The Gates have backed widely praised programmes in malaria and polio eradication, child nutrition and vaccines. The foundation last year committed $1.75 billion to Covid-19 relief.
"After a lot of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage," the couple wrote in identical tweets on their personal Twitter accounts.
"We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives."
They said they will continue to work together at the foundation, which also works to combat climate change and bolster US education.
“We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life," they said in their statement.
In a joint petition for dissolution of marriage, the couple asserted their legal union was "irretrievably broken," but said they had reached an agreement on how to divide their marital assets.
No details of that accord were disclosed in the filing in King County Superior Court in Seattle.
Bloomberg estimated the couple’s assets at $146 billion.
In 2010, the couple and billionaire investor Warren Buffett created the Giving Pledge, a promise to give at least half their wealth to charity, and urged the world’s richest to join them. Over 170 others have so far joined, including Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Bloomberg and George Lucas.
The two have been active throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in encouraging the development of vaccines with grants and publicly abiding by health safety measures.
Through their foundation, which Mr Gates has fully committed to after stepping away from day-to-day operations at Microsoft, the couple has given away more than $50 billion.
The foundation also currently has over $51bn in assets, according to a tax filing cited by CNBC.
The news quickly captured attention on social media as it follows the 2019 divorce of Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott.
That split, the largest divorce settlement in history, immediately made Ms Scott one of the world’s richest people.
In the months that followed, she became one of the most influential philanthropists in the world, giving away billions of dollars to often overlooked causes among billionaire donors.
The Gates’s wealth could prove more complex to carve up than the Bezos fortune, which was largely concentrated in Amazon stock.
The former couple met in New York in the 1980s, early into Melinda’s time as a product manager at Microsoft, before they married in Hawaii in 1994.
When deciding whether to marry, Bill made a pro-and-con list on a whiteboard – Melinda related how she walked into his bedroom to find him tabulating various factors in the Netflix documentary series “Inside Bill’s Brain.”
The couple’s philanthropy has always been deeply rooted in their relationship and marriage.
On a trip to Africa during their engagement that the couple decided they would become serious philanthropists.
“We fell in love with everything we saw but it’s really not at all trite to say that we really fell in love with the people,” Melinda Gates said at a Salesforce event in 2016.
“It just started us on this series of questions of sort of saying to ourselves, ‘What is going on here?’”
Later on in the trip, the couple filled out a marriage questionnaire to make sure they had the same values. That’s when they decided “the vast majority of resources from Microsoft would go back to society,” Melinda Gates said.
The day before they wed in Hawaii, Bill’s mother, Mary, who had been trying to convince him to dramatically increase his charity, gave Melinda a letter that closed with the words “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
“It was an easy discussion. We just thought it would be later in our lives when we got to do it,” Melinda Gates said.
if you go
The flights
The closest international airport to the TMB trail is Geneva (just over an hour’s drive from the French ski town of Chamonix where most people start and end the walk). Direct flights from the UAE to Geneva are available with Etihad and Emirates from about Dh2,790 including taxes.
The trek
The Tour du Mont Blanc takes about 10 to 14 days to complete if walked in its entirety, but by using the services of a tour operator such as Raw Travel, a shorter “highlights” version allows you to complete the best of the route in a week, from Dh6,750 per person. The trails are blocked by snow from about late October to early May. Most people walk in July and August, but be warned that trails are often uncomfortably busy at this time and it can be very hot. The prime months are June and September.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Company profile
Date started: 2015
Founder: John Tsioris and Ioanna Angelidaki
Based: Dubai
Sector: Online grocery delivery
Staff: 200
Funding: Undisclosed, but investors include the Jabbar Internet Group and Venture Friends
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Dubai Rugby Sevens
Winners: Dubai Hurricanes
Runners up: Bahrain
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Runners up: UAE Premiership
UAE Premiership
}Winners: Dubai Exiles
Runners up: Dubai Hurricanes
UAE Division One
Winners: Abu Dhabi Saracens
Runners up: Dubai Hurricanes II
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Winners: Barrelhouse
Runners up: RAK Rugby
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Our legal consultants
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Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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Starring: Michael B Jordan
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• A nationalist, his campaign slogan was Poland First. "Let's help others, but let's take care of our own citizens first," he said on social media in April.
• Cultivates tough-guy image, posting videos of himself at shooting ranges and in boxing rings.
• Met Donald Trump at the White House and received his backing.
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