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Bill Gates lost about $52 billion or 30% of his wealth on Thursday. But don’t feel bad — his net worth was simply recalculated to reflect the Microsoft cofounder’s charitable giving.
The recalculation shrank Gates’ fortune from over $175 billion to $124 billion, sending him from fifth place to 12th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His former assistant and successor as Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, replaced him in the fifth spot with a $172 billion net worth as of Thursday’s close.
Gates also trails Alphabet cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and longtime friend and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett in the rankings.
Bloomberg says that it lowered the appreciation rates used in calculating his wealth to “better reflect Gates’ outside charitable giving and the wealth estimate” that Gates provided in a blog post in May.
In that blog, Gates pegged his fortune at $108 billion and pledged to give away virtually all his money through the Gates Foundation over the next 20 years. He estimated the organization would spend more than $200 billion before closing at the end of 2045.
According to the Gates Foundation website, Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, have gifted a total of $60 billion to the organization as of December’s close, and Buffett has donated $43 billion.
Gates owns around 1% of Microsoft and has received upward of $60 billion in stocks and dividends from the company, according to his Bloomberg page. Most of his fortune is now housed within Cascade Investment, a holding company that invests in assets from real estate and energy to private and public companies.
Ballmer’s loyalty paid off
It’s striking that Ballmer is now richer than Gates, given that employees are usually worth much less than successful founders.
He’s an exception in part because, when he joined Microsoft in 1980 as an assistant to the president, he agreed to a $50,000 base salary plus 10% of the profit growth he generated, but his compensation became so high that the company offered a sizable equity stake instead.
Ballmer succeeded Gates as CEO in 2000 and stepped down in 2014 with a 4% stake in Microsoft. He now owns the Los Angeles Clippers.
Microsoft stock has soared more than 10-fold over the past decade to nearly $500 a share, making it the world’s second-most valuable company, after Nvidia, with a $3.7 trillion market cap.
Ballmer recently told the “Acquired” podcast that Buffett’s late business partner, Charlie Munger, asked him publicly why he held on to his Microsoft stock while the company’s two cofounders, Gates and Paul Allen, diversified their investments much more.
“Steve, I’m wondering why you held onto your Microsoft stock when your partners over there didn’t,” Ballmer recalled the famously frank Munger saying. “I know you’re not that smart.”
“No, Charlie, but I’m that loyal,” Ballmer replied.
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