The New York Times

The public division of the gates highlights a secret fortune

The net worth of Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates exceeds the size of the Moroccan annual economy, combines the value of Ford, Twitter and Marriott International, and is three times that of Harvard. While few know how their wealth is divided in a divorce, one thing is clear: breaking it up cannot be easy. Gates built one of the greatest fortunes in human history when he founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975. The Gateses’ net worth is estimated at more than $ 124 billion and includes assets as diverse as trophy properties, public company stocks, and rare artifacts. There is a large stake in the luxury hotel chain Four Seasons. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and ranch land, including Buffalo Bill’s historic Wyoming ranch. Companies like AutoNation and Waste Management have billions of dollars worth of stocks. There’s a villa on the beach in Southern California. And one of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. Sign up for The Morning Newsletter from the New York Times. “The amount of money and the variety of assets involved in this divorce is baffling,” said David Aronson, an attorney who has represented wealthy clients in divorce cases. “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

The post 4 Fort Worth City Employees Resign After Caught Paving Private Driveway first appeared on DECKS AND FENCES DAILY.

A handful of Glenwood Springs residents asking the city to put up a security fence near their property will likely have to seek help elsewhere.

Glenwood Springs City Council on Thursday turned down a proposal that two private fence replacement parts should be included in existing public projects, at partial or total cost to the city.

Initially, two Hagar Lane residents asked the city to erect a 300-foot fence on the east side of a proposed sidewalk near their Midland Avenue subdivision. Pedestrians regularly cross their yards to gain access to the Atkinson Trail and the Roaring Fork River, raising safety concerns.

Lynn Aliya and her neighbor Natalie Kellum said the lack of a barrier leads to vandalism, burglary and other security risks. They are also concerned about liability should a pedestrian who cuts through their property be injured.

“We had a situation where someone crossed the river and came into our house,” said Kellum. “It may seem relatively harmless, but knowing that it has already happened to me – I was actually in my house when the Lord broke in with my 2-year-old daughter.”

The council discussed the possibility of increasing the height of an existing retaining wall near its subdivision to prevent spectators from climbing it. However, some members said it was the responsibility of the landowner to put up a sign saying “Private Property” or “No Access to the River” to deter intruders.

If the city built the fence, it would remain the city’s responsibility to maintain it.

“It’s kind of a slippery slope,” said Alderman Steve Davis. “When you start doing this, will you offer a fence to everyone who lives down the river?”

City officials recommended that the project and one other proposed by Mayor Jonathan Godes as a resident of the southern Glenwood area be rejected.

“The company uses public dollars for private purposes,” said city engineer Terri Partch. “When we do public projects we sometimes have to negotiate with private owners. But they are linked to right of way. “

Partch said that these ease acquisition talks usually involve a cost trade by adding trees, fences, or embellishments.

“Besides that, we don’t … because we have limited public dollars,” she said.

Staff also said paying for private improvements related to public projects will lead to an influx of inquiries and inflated public project costs.

Councilor Ingrid Wussow made the first motion to reject both fences, suggesting that Aliya and Kellum discuss their options with the city’s planning department instead.

In addition, Godes had asked council members to consider partnering with residents between the north and south entrances of Park West Drive along Midland Avenue to replace an unsightly fence that runs alongside the street.

Godes gave several examples of Glenwood Springs offering visual enhancements between public and private properties at the city’s expense.

The costs would be shared among neighborhood residents, he said, arguing that there would be a public benefit to having a third of the city’s population commuting on the street.

“Midland Avenue is one of the busiest streets in the city,” he said. “I don’t know not to allocate $ 10,000 or $ 20,000 from a $ 14 million project for beatification … the fact that it benefits some private individuals I don’t think matters at all to the conversation. “

With no associated costs made available to the council, “it just isn’t thorough enough” to move forward at this point, Wussow said.

news@postindependent.com

The post Glenwood Springs Council scraps residents’ request for personal fence alternative first appeared on DECKS AND FENCES DAILY.

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The post Southborough Customized Craftsman conversion with white fence enclosed, non-public yard supplied at 9,000 first appeared on DECKS AND FENCES DAILY.