纽约时报
公共分隔的大门突出了一个秘密财富
比尔盖茨和梅琳达法国盖茨的净值超过了摩洛哥年度经济的规模，结合了福特，推特和万豪国际的价值，是哈佛大学的三倍。虽然很少知道他们的财富在离婚中是如何分开的，但有一件事很清楚：突破它不能容易。当他于1975年与保罗艾伦创立微软创建了人类历史中最伟大的幸运之一。盖茨斯的净值估计超过1240亿美元，包括奖杯属性，公共公司股票和罕见神器等各种资产。豪华酒店连锁四季有大量股份。有数以千亩农田和牧场的土地，包括布法罗比尔的历史悠久的怀俄明牧场。自动化和废物管理等公司有数十亿美元的股票。南加州海滩上有一个别墅。和Leonardo da Vinci的笔记本之一。从纽约时报注册早晨的时事通讯。“涉及这一离婚的金额和各种资产是令人困惑的，”David Aronson表示，董事会在离婚案件中代表富裕的客户。 “There have seldom been cases that are anywhere near that size.” Only the 2019 divorce between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his now ex-wife, writer and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, was bigger. Bezos had an estimated net worth of $ 137 billion, although mostly in Amazon stocks, and Scott retained 4% of Amazon’s stock, valued at $ 36 billion. But Gates has diversified its holdings for decades; He only owns 1.3% of Microsoft. Instead, its stock portfolio includes holdings in dozens of publicly traded companies. He is the largest private owner of farmland in the country, according to The Land Report. In addition to the Four Seasons, he has stakes in other luxury hotels and a company that caters to private jet owners. His real estate portfolio includes one of the largest houses in the country and several riding facilities. He is involved in a clean energy investment fund and a nuclear power startup. There is also the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Aside from the rest of Gates’ fortune, the foundation is one of the world’s largest nonprofits, with $ 50 billion in trust, and plays a uniquely important role in global public health. The foundation is in a trust and cannot be split as part of the marital property. However, the question remains whether, once the split is complete, she will be the primary recipient of her charitable donations. The couple entered into a separation agreement, according to French Gates’ divorce petition, but the details are not disclosed. The filing requests the court to apportion their real estate, personal property and debts according to the terms set out in this agreement. French Gates lawyers have been working on a plan to segregate some assets since 2019, a knowledgeable person said. Divorce attorneys who are not working on the Gates split say that some of the personal assets could be difficult to evaluate, difficult to separate, and highly complex. Some of the fortune has already been split: soon after the announcement, stakes in AutoNation, Canadian National Railway and two of the couple’s Mexican companies valued at $ 2.4 billion were transferred to French Gates, making them a billionaire in her own right. A detailed list may be more difficult to come by. “Divorce is actually one of the times when things break open and the light shines in,” said Chuck Collins, senior researcher at the Washington Institute for Political Studies and author of “The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions” . But he added that prenuptial agreements and settlements are designed for privacy. “Parts of a prenup are about keeping all family trusts and things secret,” he said. “You have all of this in a row before you fall in love.” At the same time, lawyers point out that the problems that create friction in an average divorce are completely absent for the stratospheric rich. “It is almost easier to settle a case like this when the parties tend to solve it than to solve a case where people live comfortably but don’t have enough to live comfortably when they have cut it all in half “so Aronson said. “That will only change for these people to the extent that billions of dollars they can give away to anything they want.” A Secretly Managed Fortune At the heart of the Gates Fortune and Foundation is a little-known entity called Cascade Investment. Cascade is based in Kirkland, Washington and is led by Michael Larson, a former bond fund manager for Putnam Investments. For decades he has been responsible for the foundation and most of the Gates and French Gates’ personal fortunes. Gates began reducing his stake in Microsoft starting with its IPO in 1986 when he owned 45% of the company, a stake worth $ 350 million at the time. Today he has an estimated net worth of $ 124 billion, according to Forbes, or $ 146 billion according to research firm Wealth-X. Including the Gates Foundation endowments and Gates personal wealth, Cascade is most likely overseeing assets that bring them to the level of some of the world’s largest hedge funds or beyond. Larson operates Cascade with an obsessive level of secrecy and goes to great lengths to hide the company’s transactions so that they cannot simply be traced back to the Gateses. In a 1999 interview with Fortune Magazine, Larson said he chose the name “Cascade” because it was a generic sounding name in the Pacific Northwest. Larson’s wealth management strategy is based on value investing – a long-term approach to finding solid, undervalued stocks. This approach is often associated with Warren Buffett, who is a close friend of Gates’. Larson is more focused on buying and holding brick and mortar businesses than high-growth technology stocks. (Gates selects its tech investments and keeps them outside of Cascade.) This strategy pays off for foundations and family wealth. Both of them focus on preserving wealth rather than risky wagering. “He has achieved the best possible result for decades with absolute discretion,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley investor who helped found Elevation Partners, a private equity firm and has worked with Larson in the past. Larson has a particular preference for luxury hotels and insists that top hotels withstand recessions better than cheap accommodations. Cascade owns several Four Seasons hotels, including one in Whistler, Canada, and the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2007, Gates teamed up to buy the Four Seasons hotel management company with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for $ 3.8 billion, each with a 47.5% stake. Although Cascade has stated that it has a long-term commitment to Four Seasons, in recent years both Cascade and Kingdom Holding, Prince Alwaleed’s family office, have flirted with the idea of ending at least part of their investment, one said person who is familiar with their person thinking. In late 2019, Gates and Prince Alwaleed discussed the possibility of an initial public offering of shares valued at $ 10 billion. The idea of an IPO or private sale of one or both of the shares has been revived in recent months, the person added. Kingdom officials did not respond to requests for comment. A Cascade spokesman declined to comment. The Future of Their Philanthropy Gates and French Gates have played such an outsized role in philanthropy that questions arose immediately after the divorce about the future of the Gates Foundation. The foundation directs billions in 135 countries to help fight poverty and disease. By 2019, it had given away nearly $ 55 billion. (In 2006, Buffett pledged $ 31 billion of his fortune to the Gates Foundation, which significantly increases the granting of grants.) Since retiring from Microsoft in 2008, Gates has devoted much of his time to the foundation. He also runs Gates Ventures, a company that invests in companies dealing with climate change and other issues. Over the decades, Gates has lost the image of a ruthless tech manager fighting the US government over antitrust law in order to be seen as a global doer. And he seems very aware of the stark contrast between the extent of his wealth and his role as a philanthropist. “I’ve been rewarded disproportionately for the work I have done – while many others work just as hard to get through,” he admitted in a year-end blog post of 2019. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was founded in 2019, 2000. Today the two serve as co-chairs, who the foundation has stated will not change once the divorce is finalized. But French Gates has been reporting more recently on the efforts of their other group, Pivotal Ventures, which is focused on gender equality and social advancement. It remains unclear what resources will be available to her after the divorce is finalized, but French Gates will most likely still have a huge impact on the world of philanthropy. “There is no explanation of how you get into this privileged situation,” French Gates told the New York Times last year. “There just aren’t any.” This article originally appeared in the New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
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