Personal life
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The Gates's home is an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000.
His 66,000 sq ft (6,100 m2) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500 sq ft (230 m2) gym and a 1,000 sq ft (93 m2) dining room.[58]
Also among Gates' private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.[59] Gates is also known as an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby.[60] He also enjoys playing bridge, tennis, and golf.[61][62]
Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call him a "centibillionaire".[63] Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought.[64] Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667.[65] He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.[66] In March 2010 Bill Gates was bumped down to the second wealthiest man behind Carlos Slim.
Philanthropy
Further information: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Gates began to appreciate the expectations others had of him when public opinion mounted suggesting that he could give more of his wealth to charity. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations into one to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest transparently operated charitable foundation in the world.[67] The foundation allows benefactors access to information regarding how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.[68][69] The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.[70] As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over $28 billion to charity.[71] They plan to eventually give 95% of their wealth to charity.[72]The foundation was at the same time criticized because it invests assets that it has not yet distributed with the exclusive goal of maximizing return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been charged with worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.[73] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments, to assess social responsibility.[74] It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.[75]
Gates's wife urged people to learn a lesson from the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, which had sold its home and given away half of its value, as detailed in The Power of Half.[76] Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) signed a promise they called the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge", in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time.[77][78][79]
Recognition
In 1987, Gates was officially declared a billionaire in the pages of Forbes' 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. As the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was worth $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he'd been worth the year before, when he'd debuted on the list.[80]Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts.[81] In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time".[82] Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.[83]
In 1994, he was honoured as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000;[84] the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; invited in 2003 to deliver the keynote address [85] of the Golden Jubilee of the Indian Institute of Technology ,held in San Jose, California;[86] Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007;[87] Harvard University in June 2007;[88] the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in January 2008,[89] and Cambridge University in June 2009.[90] He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.[91] Gates was also made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005,[92] in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.[93]
In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".[94] In October 2009, it was announced that Gates will be awarded the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership of The Franklin Institute for his achievements in business and for his philanthropic work. In 2010 he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.[95]
In 2011, Bill Gates was ranked as the fifth most powerful person in the world, according to rankings by Forbes magazine. [96]
Investments
- Cascade Investments LLC, a private investment and holding company, incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, Washington.
- bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates.
- Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.
- TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company.
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