This might not seem as too much considering that Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are worth approximately $130 billion. But, $3 billion is still a substantial amount. One that most of us never going to come near to.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the pair is already splitting their assets. The divorce came as a massive surprise, but now the divorce needs to be in the spotlight. It would seem that Bill transferred to his ex-wife shares worth north of $3 billion. Some of the shares in question belong to the company Deere & Co. This company is located in Illinois, and the worth of their shares that went to Melinda is $850 million. It is estimated that this is 7% of all shares he has in the company.
The news became public because he controls more than 10% of the companies shares, and thus the announcement needed to be public. But, this won’t hurt Bill’s ownership of the company too much. At the moment he still owns 9.3 percent. This news is followed by the reports of other transfers that happened these days and they include a Coca-Cola bottler, AutoNation Inc., and a Canadian railroad. The last three packages of shares amount to close to $2.4 billion.
As we already mentioned the two of them have a value of $130 billion. Forbes stands behind this data, and when on May 3rd Melinda filed for divorce, they disclosed that the former pair had an arrangement in the works even before the split. The goal was to avoid courts and media attention and to finish things quickly and clean as possible. Sources close to the pair claim that the two of them are not in dispute and that they’ll continue their work together at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The story from above was confirmed by Randy Kessler, who excels in celeb divorced. Mr. Kessler said: “Mr. and Mrs. Gates and their lawyers have done an exemplary job of resolving their issues privately and professionally and have therefore controlled their matters instead of leaving it to a judge.”
While the marriage between the two hasn’t been in the public eye for a while, it quickly came to attention after they announced the split. After 27 years of marriage, there ought to be some issues, and the one that popped out the most was Bill’s 2000 affair, with a member of Microsoft staff. Many people are now commenting on their relationship and one source close to Melinda said: “He could have treated Melinda better. He’s not a saint, but there isn’t one thing that created the final split. It goes deeper than that.”
As we said, many people are now, more than ever eager to comment on their relationship.
The same source added “It’s many years of differing views of the world, the foundation, and of life in general, and those things piling up. They are older and each personally looked at life and asked, ‘Is there more out there than what I have?'”
Whatever happened between the two is now far behind them as they embark on a new chapter in their lives. The pair famously got married back in 1994 in Lanai, Hawaii. Their New Year’s Eve marriage resulted in three children, son Rory, and daughters Phoebe and Jennifer.
Kim Marks 
Nina Smith