Bill Gates drops to No 12 on Forbes' richest people list

After nearly two decades of being ranked as either the richest or second richest person on the annual Forbes 400 list of America's wealthiest people starting from 1990, billionaire Bill Gates is no longer even in the publication's top 10 list.

Gates, although has a huge wealth of $107 billion, his new rank on the new Forbes list has dropped to No 9 this year, down from No 6 a year ago, reported Forbes.

Consequently, Gates now ranks at No 12, which is the first time he has dropped out of the world’s top ten richest people since 1991.

Divorce from Melinda French Gates

One of the significant reasons for his drop turned out to be his 2021 divorce from Melinda French Gates after marriage of 27 years.

Upon the announcement of French Gates informing that she was resigning as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it was also mentioned by her that she would be getting an additional $12.5 billion for her philanthropic endeavours.

Melinda didn’t mention where the funds were coming from or when she would get them. However, it was learned by Forbes that those funds were not a transfer of assets of Gates Foundation. Instead, they were coming from Gates and it appeared that the transfer of the funds was made by him already.

In addition, the previous estimate of the divorce settlement that French Gates received has been nearly tripled by Forbes.

The net worth of French Gates has been boosted to an estimated $29 billion, up from $10.3 billion a year ago, by Forbes based on the basis of this new information. This makes her the ninth-richest woman in the country.

It is also worth noting that Gates predicted his own decline on the Forbes ranking in a wide-ranging discussion at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy in September 2022.

At the time, Gates said that he planned to keep giving away more of his fortune and continue doing so until he dropped off the Forbes billionaires list.