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Bill Gates Is Giving Billions Away To ‘Get Off World’s Richest List’

Bill Gates
Credit: Alamy

Bill Gates has given away billions of dollars this week as he seeks to remove himself from the list of the world’s richest people, according to reports.

Filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suggest Gates is eager to fulfil his promise to donate ‘virtually all’ of his wealth to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, boosting it with $6billion worth of stocks from his personal portfolio. 

Speaking to Forbes on July 13, the Microsoft founder expressed his desire to follow the ‘give while you live’ concept made famous by airport Duty-Free Shoppers co-founder Chuck Feeney. 

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He said: “I’ll get myself out of the highly visible part of the list with just say two more gifts of this magnitude. I would get myself off the top part of the list.  

“Getting all the way off the list, that’s going to take me a while, but my direction of travel is clear.” 

Thanks to his recent shedding of personal wealth, including $20billion in one month and $6billion worth of stocks from Canadian National Railway Co and Deere & Co., Gates has dropped a spot on the rich list to fifth, with the ultimate aim to remove himself from it completely, according to Forbes.

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Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, and Gautam Adani boast higher net worths than Gates, who still possesses $112billion, according to Bloomberg.

The American business magazine also says these recent donations bring Bill and Melinda’s lifetime donations to $55billion, making them the ‘biggest philanthropists of all time,’overtaking Warren Buffet, who has donated $48billion to the foundation. 

The Gates’ plan to increase project spending by 50 percent between now and 2026 with estimated outgoings of $41.4billion. 

He added: “This is going to supercharge or accelerate, charge, turbocharge basically all the work that we do.”

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Written by Cal Gaunt

Cal is a former content editor at IGV who specialised in writing trending and entertainment news. He previously worked as a news reporter at the Lancashire Telegraph and earned an NCTJ in Sports Journalism.