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Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft Corporation, announced that he will step down from the company’s board of directors so that he can devote himself to continuing his charitable projects and activities.
Gates, a billionaire who ranks among the world’s richest elites, said he wants to focus on activities related to global health, development, education and climate change.
Gates, 65, also left his seat on the board of Berkshire Hathaway Holding, headed by renowned investor Warren Buffett.
Gates resigned from his position as Microsoft’s CEO in 2008, contenting himself with the non-executive chairmanship of its board of directors.
“The company will always remain an important part of my working life,” Gates said in the retirement announcement, noting that he will be in constant contact with those in charge of it.
“I look forward to this next stage as an opportunity to preserve the friendships and partnerships that have always meant a lot to me, and to continue to contribute to two companies that I am very proud of, while giving priority primarily to my commitment to work to address some of the most difficult challenges in the world,” Gates added.
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Bill Gates Palace on the banks of Lake Washington is surrounded by trees to maintain privacy
With a wealth of about $ 103.6 billion, Gates ranked second on the Forbes list of the world’s richest men, after Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, who topped the list first.
Gates made his fortune by developing software for personal computers.
When Gates was a young adult, he left college and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he created Microsoft in partnership with his childhood friend Paul Allen, who died in 2018.
The two partners made their first big breakthrough in 1980, when Microsoft signed an agreement with IBM to build the operating system, which became known as MS-DOS.
Microsoft was announced as a public company in 1986, and within one year Bill Gates, 31, became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
Gates has been a member of the Berkshire Board of Directors since 2004, but he devoted most of his time to the Bill and Melinda Charitable Foundation, which he founded with his wife, an organization dealing with poverty and incurable diseases, as well as providing computers around the world.
The couple won the title of the most generous philanthropy in the United States in 2018, after donating $ 4.8 billion to charities in 2017.
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