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Gates Foundation sold over $1B in stock ahead of divorce announcement

Mount Equity Group Tokyo Japan > News > Business > Gates Foundation sold over $1B in stock ahead of divorce announcement

The trust of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sold off $1.4 billion in stock in the first quarter of 2021, raking in a huge profit months before the billionaire couple announced their divorce

The foundation’s trust, one of the largest in the world, revealed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had sold all of its shares of Apple, Amazon and Twitter as of the end of March.

It’s not known at what price the trust sold its shares, but those holdings were valued at hundreds of millions of dollars based on average stock prices during the quarter.

The trust first bought shares of those three companies in the first quarter of 2020, filings show, indicating that they like made huge profits on those bets.

The trust also trimmed its massive holdings of FedEx, UPS and Walmart, among others, the filings show. The trust likely scored a windfall on those sales, too, based on the estimated average price paid for shares over time in those holdings.

The exterior of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is seen on May 4, 2021, in Seattle.David Ryder/Getty Images

It used some of its proceeds to buy a new $282