It’s official: today is the last day that his royal highness William Henry Gates III will sit proudly atop his bulging Microsoft kingdom in an official capacity.
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates steps back from the software empire he created. Image: DomainBarnyard/Flickr.
After founding software company Microsoft Corporation in April of 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen, Bill Gates is finally clearing his executive desk at the age of 52 and heading off toward a well-earned sunset as the world’s third richest man. Nice work if you can get it.
With the daily grind of fending off corporate lawsuits and counting his stacks of cash now firmly behind him, Gates has revealed he will turn his attentions to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a charity organisation founded by Gates and wife Melinda in 2000 with ambitions to enhance healthcare and reduce poverty in poorer countries while also improving educational possibilities and access to information technology.
Speaking at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates said: “There are roughly a billion people in the world who don’t get enough food, who don’t have clean drinking water, who don’t have electricity, the things we take for granted,” regarding the foundation’s role in helping to fast track the quality of life for people in developing nations.
While backing from Gates would ordinarily be considered influential support enough for most charitable ventures, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation became the world’s largest charity in 2006 when Warren Buffet, the world’s richest man, pledged stock worth some $30 billion dollars to the organisation in order to help it achieves its goals.
Despite officially stepping back from the Microsoft empire, Gates will apparently continue to serve as a ‘one day a week’ chairman for the corporation, periodically checking in to lend his expertise to specific in-house projects.
Although his retirement was officially announced a long time prior to June 27, Gates is handing the reins of corporate control to CEO Steve Ballmer at a particularly sticky time for Redmond-based Microsoft, reports financial magazine Bloomberg.
Specifically, Microsoft’s share value is currently down some 22 percent for 2008, sales attributed to its traditionally dominant Windows operating system software are losing momentum, and a recent high-profile acquisition bid for Internet pioneer Yahoo! ended in failure, leaving search advertising specialist Google lurching even further into the distance.
Still, with an estimated net worth of around $58 billion and a prolonged holiday to enjoy, it’s unlikely Bill’s margaritas will taste anything less than sweet while Steve’s busy sweating at the office and he’s lounging by the pool.
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