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bill and melinda gates foundation

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Billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates have announced their divorce after 27 years of marriage, saying “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple”.

The pair tweeted: “After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage.”

They first met in the 1980s when Melinda joined Bill’s Microsoft firm.

Bill and Melinda Gates have three children and jointly run the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The foundation has spent billions fighting causes such as infectious diseases and encouraging vaccinations in children.

The Gates – along with investor Warren Buffett – are behind the Giving Pledge, which calls on billionaires to commit to giving away the majority of their wealth to good causes.

Bill Gates is the fourth wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, and is worth $124 billion.

He made his money through the company he co-founded in the 1970s, Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company.

Bill and Melinda both posted the statement announcing their divorce on Twitter.

“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,” the statement read.

“We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives.

“We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.”

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Melinda Gates, now 56, joined Bill’s 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 Gates 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.”

Melinda said she found Bill Gates – methodical it seems even in matters of the heart – writing a list on a whiteboard with the “pros and the cons of getting married”.

Bill and Melinda Gates got married in 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, reportedly hiring all the local helicopters to stop unwanted guests flying over.

Bill Gates, 65, stepped down from Microsoft’s board last year to focus on his philanthropic activities.

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Microsoft founder Bill Gates has given away $4.6 billion to charity in his largest donation since 2000.

Bill Gates remains the world’s richest person, despite giving away 64 million shares in Microsoft.

The shares are equivalent to 5% of his total fortune, currently estimated to be $89.9 billion.

Since 1994, Bill Gates, 61, and his wife Melinda have given away a total of $35 billion in cash and stocks to a range of charitable causes.

The donation was made in June but became public on August 14 following the filing of a document with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Bill Gates’ share in Microsoft is now just 1.3%. Prior to this, he gave away $16 billion in Microsoft shares in 1999 and $5.1 billion in 2000.

The majority of all previous donations have been made to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is primarily focused on reducing world poverty, combating infectious diseases and providing universal access to computers.

Image source Flickr

It is not known who the recipient of Bill Gates’ latest donation is, however when federal documents are filed, it usually means new money is being given to a foundation, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and the well-known investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett created the Giving Pledge, and as of May 2017, 158 individuals or couples have agreed to contribute at least half of their wealth to charity.

This latest donation is the biggest charitable gift to have been made anywhere in the world so far this year.

The second largest was made by Warren Buffett, who donated almost $3.2 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last month.

The third biggest came from Dell Computer Corporation founder Michael Dell and his wife Susan.

In May, Michael and Susan Dell gave more than $1 billion to their foundation, which focuses on children’s issues and community initiatives.

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