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Melinda becomes a billionaire after her divorce from Bill Gates. The transfer appears to be the first of many public transactions the pair will make as they start to divide up their extraordinary assets.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates transferred US$1.8 billion in stocks to his wife Melinda the day they announced their divorce after reaching a ‘separation agreement’.
Bill and Melinda have been married for 27 years and have three adult children, but announced in a joint statement on Monday they were parting ways with Melinda saying the marriage was ‘irretrievably broken.’
The pair’s divorce settlement hasn’t been finalized in court but they have agreed on some of the terms of their separation.
It’s likely that the pair will settle privately, and that the only sight into their division of assets will come from SEC filings about how many shares they own in public companies.
On Monday, one such filing revealed that Bill gave Melinda more than 14 million shares of the Canadian National Railway Company worth $1.5billion. He also gave her 2.9 million shares of AutoNation.
The shares were transferred from Cascade Investment LLC, an investment company controlled by Gates. Bill has hired 97-year-old billionaire lawyer Charlie T Munger to represent him in the divorce.
