If you own a mutual fund that invests in the Standard and Poor's 500 stock
index, you own Microsoft.  In fact, several percentage points of the S&P
500 portfolio consists of Microsoft stock.

kelly

from The New York Times

July 17, 1999

Gates Hits $100 Billion Mark, More or Less

By AMY HARMON

     Last month, in the largest gift ever by a living person to a
     charitable foundation, Bill Gates, the chairman of the Microsoft
     Corporation, donated $5 billion to support education and health
     care causes.

     Yesterday, in a few hours of stock market trading, Gates's holdings
     surged by just about that amount, brushing $100 billion for the
     first time.

     The mixture of awe and dismay that has long characterized America's
     fixation on Gates's personal wealth was perhaps best summed up
     yesterday by Vincent Malgapo, a contributor to the Silicon Investor
     electronic discussion forums: "Bill Gates MSFT stock worth $100
     Billion right now!" read the comment, which was posted at 11:41
     A.M. "WOW!"

     Gates, who owns 19.84 percent, or about one billion shares, of the
     company he co-founded in 1975, owes his world record to the
     remarkable performance of Microsoft's stock. Shares of the software
     company climbed 5.4 percent yesterday to a record high of $99.4375,
     on expectations that it will establish a separate tracking stock
     for its Internet properties.

     The company is the first to top $500 billion in market value. If it
     were a country it would have the ninth-largest economy in the
     world, behind Spain, which has a gross domestic product of $553
     billion.

     But the ballooning of Microsoft's stock price simply does not hold
     the same fascination as that of its chairman's brokerage account.

     "He finally did it," said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for
     the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "This is what we've all been
     waiting for. How much interest do you suppose it generates? I bet
     it's a 747 per day."

     Philip Greenspun, creator of the Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock,
     a Web site that continuously calculates the value of Gates's
     Microsoft stock, had a more pointed speculation.

     "Maybe this will convince my students they shouldn't work so hard
     to become rich," said Greenspun, a researcher at the Massachusetts
     Institute of Technology's laboratory for computer science. "Because
     they're probably not going to be richer than Bill Gates, so they
     might as well do something interesting and valuable to society
     instead."

     At a time of sustained economic prosperity, America's proclivity to
     celebrate wealth is reflected in the high marks Gates still
     receives in national opinion polls. And the 43-year-old executive,
     who lives in a $60 million mansion on the shores of Lake Washington
     with his wife and two children, has recently begun to contribute
     more to philanthropy.

     But the $100 billion mark may also mark a change in popular
     perception.

     "Gates has crossed a psychological marker and it's going to
     increase pressure on him to recycle more and more of that money
     through his foundations," said Ron Chernow, an economic historian.
     "There will be more attention focused on the extraordinarily
     lopsided distribution of wealth."

     Of course, Gates is not the only software entrepreneur to become
     fabulously wealthy in recent years. Microsoft's co-founder, Paul
     Allen, and its chief executive, Steve Ballmer, are among the
     world's five richest people, along with the investor Warren E.
     Buffett, whose 39.9 percent stake in the investment holding company
     Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is valued at about $42.5 billion, making
     him second to Gates.

     Dozens of founders of fledgling Internet companies have become
     worth millions on paper in a matter of months.

     And by some calculations, Gates is poorer than John D. Rockefeller,
     who had in excess of 2 percent of the gross national product at the
     peak of his wealth in 1913.

     Still, it may not be long before Gates passes another milestone.

     "The key is when he reaches a trillion," said Lewis D'vorkin, an
     executive editor at Forbes magazine, which publishes an annual list
     of the world's 400 richest people. "If Microsoft share price grows
     in the next five years as fast as it has in the last five, he hits
     the big one in 2004."
     _________________________________________________________________


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