Who is Bill Gates?
William Henry Gates III (born 28 October 1955) is an American entrepreneur, software executive, philanthropist and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 9 percent of the common stock.
Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a large minority of industry insiders criticise his business tactics, which they consider as as anti-competitive. In some instances, courts have upheld this particular criticism. Other court cases on the same charges, in different jurisdictions, are still ongoing. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.
The annual Forbes magazine’s list of The World’s Billionaires has ranked Gates as the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2007, with recent estimates of his net worth over US$59 billion. When family wealth is considered, his family ranks second behind the Walton family, heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. In July 2007, Fortune magazine reported that the increase in value of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s holdings of stock caused him to surpass Bill Gates as the world’s richest man. Forbes maintains that Slim is second to Gates as of its last calculation of billionaire fortunes. Forbes does not plan to recalculate Slim’s wealth until next year seocontest2008.
Source: wekipedia.org