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Washington (AP) - Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda divorce after 27 years of marriage.
The multibillionaire and his wife said in an identical statement on Twitter.
They plan to go their separate ways privately, but want to continue the work of the influential Gates Foundation together.
"After careful consideration and a lot of work on our relationship, we have decided to end our marriage," they wrote on Monday (local time).
Bill Gates, who founded the future IT giant Microsoft together with Paul Allen in 1975, is considered one of the richest people in the world.
According to Forbes magazine, the 65-year-old's fortune is said to be more than 120 billion US dollars, which puts him in fourth place on the global list of the super-rich.
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"In the past 27 years we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works worldwide to enable people to live healthy and productive lives," the two continued. It was said that they would continue this mission together. "But we no longer believe that as a couple we can grow together in this next phase of life." In the communication, the couple also asked for "privacy for our family as we begin to find our way in this new life."
In the brief statement, the couple did not provide any information on how the family's assets should be divided. Even in the case of a relatively strict marriage contract, 56-year-old Melinda French Gates is likely to become a multi-billionaire after the divorce. The couple was previously known for not making their private life public. If they want to keep this, the couple should be interested in an amicable settlement. In the event of a lawsuit, a lot of private information would become public.
The Gates' previously lived on a spacious lake property in Seattle in the northwestern US state of Washington.
The couple have three children - Jenn, Rory and Phoebe, who are of legal age.
Bill Gates speaks regularly to the media, participates in discussion forums, or gives lectures.
Melinda Gates, on the other hand, is a little less well known, but has also appeared publicly in her role as co-chair of the foundation's supervisory board.
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The Gates Foundation is one of the most important donors in the field of health care and development cooperation. The Gates couple - or the spouses separated - are courted and listened to by presidents, heads of government and development organizations around the world because of the reach of their foundation. The "New York Times" quoted a statement from the foundation, according to which no changes were expected there due to the separation of the spouses. "They will continue to work together to formulate and approve the foundation's strategy, to stand up for the foundation's concerns and to set the direction of the organization," it said.
By 2019, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says it has already spent more than $ 54 billion on projects. One of the foundation's biggest supporters is investment legend Warren Buffett, who donated more than $ 27 billion to the organization's capital from 2006 to 2019, according to the foundation's website.
The celebrity couple's divorce is reminiscent of the separation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (57).
The multi-billionaire, who is also one of the richest people in the world, separated in 2019 after around 25 years of marriage from his then wife MacKenzie Bezos - they had four children.
The 50-year-old MacKenzie Scott is now remarried and says she has donated billions of her fortune.
At the time of the divorce, their stake in Amazon was valued at around $ 36 billion.
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Melinda Gates grew up with three siblings in the US state of Texas. According to the Gates Foundation, she first studied computer science and economics, and later completed a management degree (MBA). In the first decade of her career, she worked at Microsoft on the development of multimedia products, as stated on the foundation's website.
Bill Gates grew up with two sisters in Seattle, the father was a lawyer, the mother a teacher. Gates founded Microsoft at the age of 19 and dropped out of college at the elite Harvard University. The rise of the company began in 1980 when Microsoft sold the MS-DOS operating system to the manufacturer IBM, the forerunner of the later Windows, which became established worldwide in the 1990s. In 2007 Gates received an honorary degree from Harvard University, where he had dropped out. Gates gave up his active role at Microsoft in 2008 to focus on the work of the foundation. In 2020 he also resigned from the company's supervisory board.
In 2010, the Gates and Buffett couple launched the Giving Pledge initiative.
The super-rich signatories undertook to donate at least half of their assets to charitable purposes during their lifetime or afterwards - as stipulated in the will.
Gates has often emphasized in interviews that his children should only inherit a small part of his wealth, so that they can not just rest on someone else's laurels.
But the children don't have to worry: even if they only inherited one percent of the huge fortune, they would immediately be billionaires.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210503-99-455007 / 8