Melinda Gates did not like how her soon to be ex-husband handled a situation involving his money manager, Michael Larson, who faced allegations of sexual harassment in 2017. It was reported that Epstein and Gates “discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy”. However, in an interview in 2019 Gates completely denied any connection between Epstein and the Gates Foundation or his philanthropy generally. In August 2021, Gates said the reason he had meetings with Epstein was because Gates hoped Epstein could provide money for philanthropic work, though nothing came of the idea. Gates added, “It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there.”
Reliance Industries Ltd , India’s biggest company by market capitalisation, reported a 13% drop in consolidated profit for the third quarter on the back of weak oil-to-chemicals performance, which was partly offset by growth in the consumer businesses. In 2010, he and Melinda, along with Warren Buffett, created the Giving Pledge, which encourages billionaires to give the majority of their wealth to charity. Initially, Bill wrote the foundation’s annual newsletter, but Melinda asked to co-author it in 2013. Although they argued about the idea — to the point that Melinda said in her 2019 memoir she thought their marriage would end because of it — they ultimately compromised. The pair ended up sitting next to each other at a business dinner and hit it off. Melinda, now 56, described her future husband in the Netflix documentary as “funny and very high-energy.” But Bill didn’t ask her out until a few months later, when they bumped into each other in the Microsoft parking lot.
In the early 2000s, she found herself in Seattle, and for the first time, the orbit of Bill Gates — this was after she moved in with an executive at Microsoft. According to an eyewitness, Sinofsky brought Walker to Microsoft events, and at a company barbecue, she met the Microsoft founder. Gates is an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby. His days are planned for him on a minute-by-minute basis, similarly to the U.S. president’s schedule. Despite his wealth and extensive business travel, Gates flew coach in commercial aircraft until 1997, when he bought a private jet. The Road Ahead, written with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995.
“That moment marked the end of my college career and the beginning of our new company, Microsoft. Gates recalls in a WIRED interview how he performed best-in-state at a maths exam and was challenged by his friend Paul Allen to figure out how to operate a complicated computer at the high school the two attended. Gates was 13 at the time, Allen was 15 and went on to become co-founder of Microsoft. At that very young age, Gates and Allen took over teaching other students to program and why is dominique getting a divorce operate the computers because the teachers hadn’t figured it out as yet, Gates said in the same WIRED interview. The man who started his own company at the age of 20 and now 45 years later is worth $145 billion with his wife was once considered a genius coder. Some of the sheen wore off when he clashed with the US Department of Justice in 1998 and was accused of monopolistic trade practices for controlling over 97 per cent of the market for personal operating systems on computers.
Gates generally commented about his relationship with Epstein that “I met him. I didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him”. However, Gates visited Epstein “many times, despite [Epstein’s] past”. Melinda Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of its value, as detailed in their book, The Power of Half. Bloomberg News reported him as saying he argued that Oxford University should not give away the rights to its COVID-19 information, as it had announced, but instead sell it to a single industry partner, as it did. His views on the value of legal monopolies in medicine have been linked to his views on legal monopolies in software.
Melinda Gates had been working with a divorce lawyer for over a year before the duo announced it last month, partly because of her husband’s dealings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a Times report, concerns were raised about Gates’ several meetings with Epstein, which were dismissed by a spokesperson for Microsoft Corporation as meetings centred around philanthropy. Microsoft spokesperson Frank X. Shaw this week declined to answer further questions about what the board concluded and why the investigation wasn’t previously disclosed. The company in March 2020 announced Gates was leaving the board to “dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities” but would continue to serve as a technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders.
Coverage of that proceeding brought out information about romantic pursuits of women who worked for him, a long-term extra-marital affair, and a friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This information and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some deterioration of his public image, going from “a lovable nerd who was out to save the world” to “a tech supervillain who wants to protect profits over public health.” A spokesperson for Bill tells PEOPLE that “the claim of mistreatment of employees” is false. “The case of Bill Gates is a classic example of money and power. Clearly, hitting on his employees was his move. That’s how he met his wife. It’s clear that kind of behaviour continued,” Lamb said. Six current and former employees of Microsoft, the foundation and the firm that manages the Gates’ fortune said those incidents, and others more recently, at times created an uncomfortable workplace environment. Gates was known for making clumsy approaches to women in and out of the office.
The company even wrote computer software for Apple during which a legendary enmity developed between Gates and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Over the years Jobs described Gates as “unimaginative and has never invented anything”. William Henry Gates III, better known as Bill Gates, was born in 1955 in Seattle, Washington, US, and has two sisters, Kristi and Libby. His father was William H. Gates Sr., a lawyer and a civic leader in the Seattle community. His mother Mary Gates was a respected businesswoman and helped Gates get the computer firm IBM as a client, while his father encouraged him to pursue philanthropy. “I knew they would be in my corner even if I failed ”, Gates writes on his website.