Bill Gates-Melinda Gates divorce: Major TWIST in split of billionaire couple

 Bill Gates-Melinda Gates divorce: Major TWIST in split of billionaire couple - Read here

The divorce means that Bill and Melinda Gates will now split their USD 148 billion fortune that includes private mansions and other assets.

Bill Gates-Melinda Gates divorce: Major TWIST in split of billionaire couple - Read here

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DNA Web Team

 

EDITED BY

Tanweer Azam

SOURCE

DNA webdesk

Updated: Jun 16, 2021, 10:27 AM IST

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Billionaire power couple Bill Gates and Melinda Gates left everyone in deep shock when they took to Twitter on May 4 to announce their separation after remaining married for 27 years. The divorce means that Bill and Melinda Gates will now split their USD 148 billion fortune that includes private mansions, stock of public and private companies, private jets and hotel brands. 

"They’re probably about the biggest divorce imaginable," Janet George, a family law attorney at McKinley Irvin, told Bloomberg.

Notably, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is not a part of the USD 148 billion fortune of the estanged couple. The Seatlle-based foundation was launched by Bill and Melinda Gates in 2000. Melinda serves as the co-chair of the organisation, which is regarded as one of the most influential private foundations in the world. The foundation has endowment worth nearly $50 billion.

According to Bill and Melinda they will "continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work at the foundation".

Earlier it was reported by Bloomberg that over USD 3 billion of transfers from Cascade Investment, also known as BMGI (Bill and Melinda Gates Investments) have been made to Melinda Gates.

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Some reports claimed that Melinda has also received 2.25 million shares of Deere and Co. worth USD 800 million. It is learnt that Melinda has also received all the shares of Coca-Cola Femsa, a Mexican distributor, worth around USD 130 million.

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Some reports mentioned that that a prenuptial was signed by Bill Gates and Melinda, however the pair has preferred not to comment on this matter.

Bill Gates-Melinda Gates divorce: Where are Microsoft founder's daughters Jennifer and Phoebe?

Jennifer has decided to get married at a time when her parents Bill and Melinda Gates are preparing to split their USD 148 billion fortune.

Bill Gates-Melinda Gates divorce: Where are Microsoft founder's daughters Jennifer and Phoebe?

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DNA Web Team

 

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Tanweer Azam

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DNA webdesk

Updated: Jun 18, 2021, 10:21 PM IST

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Jennifer Gates, the eldest daughter of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, is not allowing the USD 148 billion divorce between her parents to spoil her happiness. It is to be noted that Bill Gates and Melinda Gates left everyone surprised when they announced about their divorce on May 4 after remaining married for 27 years. Jennifer, 25, looked in a good mood with her sister Phoebe to celebrate her upcoming nuptials. Jennifer glowed in a gorgeous white dress while posing with Phoebe.

The 18-year-old Phoebe chose to wear a strapless tanned dress and she looked as happy as Jennifer. "The bride to be," Phoebe captioned the pics with her big sis. She also added the hashtag, "#jennslastride."

Jennifer has decided to get married at a time when her parents Bill and Melinda Gates are preparing to split their USD 148 billion fortune that includes private mansions, stock of public and private companies, private jets and hotel brands. 

The controversy over Bill Gates becoming the largest private farmland owner in the US

People are drawing connections between Gates’s vast farmlands and climate change advocacy.

By Rebecca Heilweil  Jun 11, 2021, 10:20am EDT

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Bill Gates squints while sitting in front of a picture of Earth.

Bill Gates has bought a surprising amount of farmland in recent years. Michael Gottschalk/Photothek via Getty Images

Bill Gates might be a tech billionaire — but he and his wife Melinda French Gates, who are in the process of divorcing, are also two of the largest private farmland owners in the United States.

Recent reports detailing the extent of Gates’s land ownership have prompted criticism from some environmental advocates and farmers, who say there seems to be a contradiction between his public environmental advocacy and his personal investment strategy.

Others have speculated the farmland purchases may be a part of the billionaire’s overall climate efforts. Bill Gates has said there’s no connection, either way. But the new details on the purchases — and the discussion surrounding them — serve as an important reminder that billionaires can store their massive wealth in all sorts of unexpected places, and that there can often be a tension between their personal investments and their more publicized philanthropic work.

On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the Gateses had acquired more than 269,000 acres of farm in the United States in the past 10 years. Those purchases, made with the help of the Washington-based firm Cascade Investment and a number of shell companies, include farmland in nearly 20 states that cultivate vegetables such as carrots, soybeans, and potatoes (some of which end up in McDonald’s French fries). These details come after the agriculture outlet the Land Report reported in January that the tech billionaire and his wife were the country’s top private farmland owners in the country. An NBC News analysis also identified Gates as the largest farmland owner in the US.

Almost 300,000 acres is a lot of land for one family or private individual to own, but it’s still just a small part of the estimated 911 million acres of farmland in the US. While Gates appears to be one of the largest private farmland owners in the country, he’s far from alone in wanting to incorporate farmland into his investment strategy.

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As Mother Jones recently reported, other large financial firms have sought to purchase agricultural land, too, even if they have no involvement in the day-to-day farming operations. Land Report, the outlet that named Gates the top private farm owner, notes several other families that claim well over 100,000 acres. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that about 30 percent of US farmland is rented out by owners who serve as landlords and aren’t involved in farming, like Gates.

All this is to say, it shouldn’t be surprising that Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest people in the world, makes investments to serve his own financial interests.

“It’s a good investment,” Johnathan Hladik, a farmer and the policy director for the Center on Rural Affairs. “It’s smart, it’s stable, and especially over the past couple decades, it seems to be going up.”

Still, Gates’s landownership has attracted particular attention because the billionaire has tried to make a name for himself in climate advocacy. Gates is currently promoting a book on the subject, and has positioned himself and the Gates Foundation as a leader in what the future of agriculture should look like, especially in regard to technology.

One Georgia farmer and environmental advocate, John Quarterman, told NBC that while he expected that Gates would encourage more sustainable practices after buying farmland nearby, his acquisition of that land didn’t change much. And the National Farmers Union has suggested that the growing number of non-farmer owners like Gates buying up farmland — and renting it out — could lead to practices that hurt the environment: Short-term farmers who rent land are less likely to take long-term conservation steps, the organization argues, and non-farmer owners don’t have the experience to “understand the importance of protecting natural resources.”

Others have floated the opposite idea: that Gates’s massive investment in farmland might have a direct relationship to his other climate efforts. Newsweek, for instance, recently suggested his land ownership “may be connected to his investments in climate change agricultural developments and Impossible Foods,” though it didn’t offer much support for that premise.

While Bill Gates has previously tried to separate his Gates Foundation work on the climate from his private investments, Cascade Investment has defended its record on sustainability.

In response to criticism, a spokesperson for Cascade Investment emphasized that it had enrolled all its farmland in a program by Leading Harvest, a nonprofit that releases standards for sustainability focused on biodiversity, conservation, and soil. “Cascade plans to continue to evaluate and implement new initiatives that will improve the overall sustainability of its farmland portfolio,” the spokesperson told Recode.

More broadly, Gates and other wealthy buyers of farmland have also been criticized for contributing to the concentration of land ownership. Because they can usually make higher bids than what local farmers can afford, fewer people end up owning their own farmland. As University of New Mexico professor Nick Estes wrote for the Guardian in April, this results “in a greater push for monocultures and more intensive industrial farming techniques to generate greater returns,” while Indigenous people and small farmers “are more cautious with the use of land.”

The issues at play go beyond what pieces of land Bill Gates has bought. “People tend to look either for the salvation story — he’s doing this to save the planet — or they look for the opposite — you know, it’s just another greedy landowner,” Bruce Sherrick, an agriculture professor at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, told Recode. Sherrick, who is on the board of Leading Harvest, says that Gates-owned farms are taking a positive step by following Leading Harvest’s standards.

Gates himself made a point to differentiate his climate advocacy and his investments. In a Reddit AMA in March, the billionaire seemed to try to separate his climate advocacy and his personal investments when asked about his wealth of land. “My investment group chose to do this. It is not connected to climate. The agriculture sector is important,” he said in the post, before adding a more general comment about deforestation and biofuels.

But whatever Gates might wish, many observers can’t quite separate the two things. For them, Bill Gates the environmentalist is also Bill Gates the commercial farmland owner, and they think the two roles are connected even if Gates doesn’t consider them to be.