Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and his wife Melinda announced Monday that they have decided to divorce after 27 years of marriage.
“After much thought and hard work on our relationship, we decided to end our marriage,” the two said in a statement posted on Bill Gates’ Twitter account.
“We no longer believe that we can evolve as a couple in the next phase of our lives. “We are asking for space and our family’s private life to be respected as we begin to move on in this new life,” they said.
The financial details of the decision were not immediately clear.
Bill, 65, and Melinda Gates, 56, are co-chairs and co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the world’s most powerful charities, which opened in 2000. The foundation now has more than $ 51 billion. in assets, according to a tax return cited by CNBC.
The Gates, who have three children, have said they will continue to “work together for their foundation”, which fights poverty and disease.
They said nothing about the reasons that pushed them to divorce.
Bill Gates is, according to the latest Forbes rankings, the fourth richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $ 124 billion. He is behind two other Americans, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and the Frenchman Bernard Arno, and in front of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Two years earlier, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his then-wife Mackenzie announced their divorce.
