Bill Gates ‘enters the beer’: How much is his fortune and what business does he have?
When FEMSA launched its Heineken shares for sale, Bill Gates, founder and philanthropist of Microsoft, did not hesitate for “a second” to buy a stake in the company.
According to sources close to the operation, the businessman acquired the stake the same day that FEMSA, the Mexican Coca-Cola bottler, put 3.7 million euros linked to shares of its shares in Heineken up for sale.
Gates specified the purchase and acquired a minority stake in Heineken for about 902 million dollars. Even last week, the tycoon collected 3.8 percent of Heineken, that is, he bought 6.65 million shares of the brewer individually and another 4.18 million shares through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.
But the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has also invested in other businesses and has long been a powerhouse in the nonprofit world, employing nearly 1,800 people and spending nearly $80 billion since 2000.
How did Bill Gates become interested in computers?
According to Bloomberg, Bill Gates developed an interest in computers shortly after his admission to Seattle’s Lakeside School.
After entering Harvard University, Gates met his friend from Lakeside, Paul Allen, who convinced him to take a leave of absence to help build an operating system for the Altair 8800, a new computer being developed by Micro Instrumentation & Telemetry Systems. The result: Microsoft, now the world’s largest software maker by revenue.
Years later, in 1994, Gates married Melinda French, a Microsoft employee whom he had met seven years earlier at a press event in New York.
Six years later, after his stake in Microsoft exceeded $100 billion, Gates stepped down as CEO of the company and began to focus on philanthropic efforts through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The foundation’s purpose is to give the majority of its wealth to charity, a commitment it reaffirmed by signing the Giving Pledge in 2010. President Obama awarded it the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2016.
How did Bill Gates make his fortune and how much is it?
The American businessman, who ranks number 4 on the list of the 500 richest in the world, behind only Jeff Bezos, raises a fortune of 116 billion dollars.
Most of Gates’ fortune is derived from Cascade Investment, a holding company that was created with the proceeds from Microsoft stock sales and dividends.
According to a Bloomberg analysis, Gates received more than $56 billion in stock and dividends from Microsoft and other companies, including a $3.3 billion payment from Microsoft in 2004, which he donated to his philanthropic foundation.
Cascade also owns stakes in dozens of public companies, which are individually valued using disclosed share counts.
Other than Microsoft, what businesses does Bill Gates have?
In addition to Microsoft, Gates has investments in 22 other companies, ranging from transportation, materials and telecommunications.
Berkshire Hathaway is the second company in which Bill Gates has the largest stake with 23.33 percent and this company belongs to Warren Buffett.
Canadian National Railway is another of the organizations in which he decided to invest, with 17.42 percent of the portfolio. Waste Management and Deere & Co are two other companies in which the billionaire has a stake.
Caterpillar, Ecolab, Walmart, Coca-Cola FEMSA, Waste Connections, FedEx Corporation, Crown Castle International, Schrodinger, Coupang, United Parcel Service, Kraft Heinz, Madison Square Garden Sports are also part of Gates’ investments.
