It’s the end of Bill and Melinda Gates

After 27 years of marriage, billionaire Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, and his wife Melinda Gates announced their divorce on Monday, although they will continue to work together at their foundation, one of the most powerful in the world.

And the Americans wrote in a joint statement on Twitter, “After careful study and much work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage.”

The Gates, who have three children, added that they would continue to “work together in their organization,” the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which fights poverty and disease, but they believe they “can’t” develop together anymore. Husband “.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, now 65, and his wife, 56, the former director of the computer giant, didn’t immediately say anything about the reasons for the split. They begged the public to give their families the “space and privacy” they needed to be able to “start adjusting to this new life.”

Bill Gates, according to the latest Forbes ranking, is the 4th richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $ 124 billion. It follows two other Americans, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, Frenchman Bernard Arnault, and before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

While making his fortune thanks to Microsoft, he resigned as president in 2014 and from its board of directors last year. Today he devotes himself mainly to charitable work.

At the request of several leaders, he has undertaken multiple interventions since the start of the pandemic, against which his foundation has spent more than a billion dollars, according to The New York Times.

This emergence of political tensions has made him a frequent target of conspiracy theories on social media.

The foundation he created with Melinda Gates is the largest private foundation in the world. It has spent about $ 53 billion in 20 years and employs nearly 1,600 people, according to its official website.

“For and against marriage”

Some observers argued that even if they continued to work together within their organization, which they co-chaired alongside Warren Buffett, their divorce could lead to changes in the way it was financed. In particular, it is unclear whether Gates will continue to fund him as regularly as he has so far.

Bill and Melinda Gates met at a dinner party in New York City shortly after Melinda joined Microsoft in 1987.

In a documentary released on Netflix in 2019, titled “Inside Bill’s Brain,” the Microsoft co-founder explained that after dating for a year, they found themselves faced with an obligation to choose: “either separation or marriage.”

Melinda laughed: Bell had put together a list on the whiteboard of “the pros and cons of marriage.”

The Gates divorce comes after another multi-billion dollar couple divorced Jeff Bezos from his wife MacKenzie Scott in 2019.

However, the latter’s split was announced after the publication of information about an affair with the founder of Amazon.

In the case of The Gates, there was no recent news indicating the separation, even if Melinda Gates mentioned the tensions in the marriage, particularly in her book, The Moment of Lift, which was released in 2019.

MacKenzie Scott has since become 22^e The richest person on the planet and influential philanthropist, she donated about 6 billion in the year 2020 alone, and announced her marriage last month.

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