Bill Gates Gives Away $4.6bn –SEC

• Bill Gates Gives Away $4.6bn –SEC

One of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates, has donated five percent of his fortune — his largest donation since year 2000, reports say.

To be exact, it’s $4.6bn.

According to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing released on Monday and picked up by Bloomberg, Gates donated 64 million shares of Microsoft on June 6.

The report notes that this is the billionaire’s largest donation since 2000, when he donated stock valued at $5bn to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

While the SEC filing did not specify the gift’s recipient, it is expected that the money will go to Gates’ charity.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy estimates that this would bring the total of Gates’ donations to the foundation to more than $18bn.

As a co-creator of the Giving Pledge with Warren Buffett, Gates has committed to giving a majority of his wealth to charity.

His latest donation represents 38 percent of his Microsoft holdings (his stake is now down to 1.3 percent from 24 percent in 1996), but it’s still only a small fraction of his total wealth, estimated at over over $85bn by Bloomberg.

Not including this latest donation, the foundation currently has an endowment of $40.3bn — augmented in no small part by a $36.1bn donation made by Buffett in 2006.