I read, in various places, he is worth anywhere from 11 to 45 billion.
What is the real figure? Does anyone know?
I guess the way I want to qualify this question is to say. If Bill Gates said today. I want to sit on a beach and never work again, just live off my money. If he sold all his stocks and bonds and whatever and put them in one bank account (no 401K’s IRA whatever just a plain old account - and yes I know he’d never do this) what would he be worth.
Obviously no one hear knows the real scoop but any reasonable guesses?
Somewhere I’ve seen a figure of $100 billion. I suspect it starts becoming a little abstract past a certain level. Before I went out on my own, I worked for 9 years for a guy whose net worth bounced around between figures of $22 million and $440 million. I was there - things didn’t change that much. He made money, he lost money…I do remember thinking that with all the convoluted deals he was in and with all the litigation that was flying around, it was probably very hard to really figure out a firm number. One way or another he was rich and Mr. Gates is richer.
Using rough estimates, if Bill Gates sold everything, like stocks etc how much would he have? Not necessarily what he is worth, how much could he scrape together in cash? (again if he sold everything and put it all in ONE bank account)
The problem lies in that a lot of what he’s responsible for, and in control of, isn’t strictly his. So if he quit, a lot of the money associated with him would not go to him. He doesn’t own Microsoft, I don’t think. Merely runs it. Sure, he helped create it and stuff, and is the visible CEO, but there’s apparently more (or less) to it than that.
Anyway, he did say once that he’d give most of his money away if and when he retires. He realises that the difference between 20 billion and 25 billion to one person is weirdly nothing at all, so it’d be no great loss to him if his personal wealth was just 1 billion after retirement.
I mean, I know I’d be happy with that.
“So what you are telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else that you have never seen.”
It seems as if some principle analogous to the Heisenberg Principle might be at work here: if you try to really investigate how much a mega-rich guy like Bill Gates is worth, the very act of investigating might change the dollar figure you’re seeking.
If anyone uses this idea in their graduate economics thesis, remember, ya gotta credit Doghouse Reilly.
Most of his wealth is tied up in Microsoft stock. That means it’s not liquid, because if he tried to sell it all at once he’d depress the value of the stock and he wouldn’t get anywhere near his ‘paper’ value.
In fact, if he tries to move any reasonably large block of stock (say more than a few million dollars worth), investors will pick up on the fact that the boss is dumping his own stock, and Microsoft could slide.
With all the Attention on Gates, not many people realize that there are a couple of other guys at Microsoft (Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer) who are now worth what Gates was just a year or two ago. Paul Allen is worth maybe 40 billion, and Steve Ballmer is worth about 20 billion. There are secretaries at Microsoft who are millionaires on paper because of their stock options.
Steve Ballmer just made the news by making a public statement that his own company’s stock is way overvalued, as are most other tech stocks.
I saw a list one time of the richest people of all time–but with some number crunching done to adjust for inflation and some other junk.
Anyway, under their formulas, these were the all-time top dogs:
John D Rockefeller 190 B 1913
Andrew Carnegie 100 B 1901
Cornelius Vanderbilt 96 B 1870’S
John Jacob Astor 78 B 1840’S
Bill Gates 61 B 1998
This was as of last October. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of their algorithm, unfortunately, I can’t find the link where I saw this list (the 40 richest people of all time).
He does get a salary, however. Last I read it was about $450,000 per year.
He said on the news he is giving $10B? For college scholarships for minorities.
Just got himself a big house, for around $50M.
If he sold stock to buy things, the price would drop, & a lot of people own Microsoft stock and they don’t want their stock to drop, so I bet they just loan him money for things like the house.
On Who wants to be a Millionaire [This exact program has been playing in England for years], one question was, what tech stock is NOT traded on the NYSE & it was Microsoft. I never could figure out why its not.
GuanoLad and everyone else. Thanks for the info Guano had the idea I was going after. It is like the Queen of England. She’s worth billions but most of it really isn’t hers and she’d never be able to get her hands on it.