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Bill Gates transferred $1.8bn (N685bn) in stock to Melinda on day of divorce news

The investment firm of Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates’ transferred $1.8 billion (estimated N685 billion naira) in stock to his wife, Melinda, the same day the couple announced their separation after 27 years of marriage, New York Post reports.

Cascade Investment, a holding company that Gates formed to manage much of his financial assets, transferred more than 14 million shares of Canadian National Railway to Melinda Gates on Monday, according to a securities filing.

The NY Post reports that on the same day, the firm transferred more than 2.9 million shares of AutoNation to Melinda Gates, a separate filing shows.

Based on Wednesday’s stock prices, the Canadian National Railway holdings are worth more than $1.5 billion and the shares of AutoNation, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company that sells cars, are valued at over $300 million.

The couple’s divorce petition, which was filed Monday in King County Superior Court in Washington state, indicated that they don’t have a prenuptial agreement to distribute their estimated $130 billion in assets.

Instead, the two have signed a separation contract for dividing their property and possessions, but the terms of that agreement have not been publicly disclosed in court documents.

Bill and Melinda Gates are going their separate ways after 27 years of marriage.

In a joint statement, the couple announced they’ve made a decision to get divorced.

After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” the statement reads.

“Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.

We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in the next phase of our lives,” it added.

Melinda Gates filed a petition for divorce in King County, Washington, on Monday, asking a judge to dissolve the marriage based on the couple’s separation contract. No financial details were included in the publicly available documents.

The couple founded their philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together in 2000. Since then, the foundation has spent $53.8 billion on a wide range of initiatives related to global health, poverty alleviation and more, according to its website.

Bill Gates is one of the richest people in the world. His net worth was $137 billion as of February, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranking.

Bill, 65, and Melinda, 56, began dating in 1987 after they met at Microsoft — which Bill Gates founded and was, at the time, running as CEO. She started as a product manager as the only woman in the first class of MBA graduates to join the company, and eventually rose through the ranks to become general manager of information products.