How did Bill Gates End Up Owning $13 Billion Worth of Canada’s Biggest Railway?
May 16th, 2021Via: The Star:
Cascade Investment LLC, the holding company that controls the majority of Bill Gates’s wealth, transferred more than 14 million shares of Canadian National Railway Co. to his soon-to-be-ex. The CN stock was worth almost $1.9 billion (Canadian) and represented about two per cent of total shares in the company, Canada’s biggest railroad.
Even after that transfer, Gates remains CN’s largest shareholder: Cascade alone owns 87 million shares and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust owns almost 14 million shares. Combined, Gates has direct or indirect control over 14.2 per cent of the stock, worth $13.6 billion as of the date of the divorce announcement. That one investment would make him the second- or third-richest person in Canada.
Gates has also amassed power in the CN boardroom. Cascade senior investment manager Justin Howell took a seat on the company’s board last month.
