Is Bill Gates Rich?

Is Bill Gates Rich?

Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 13:18:11 -0400

"Money is neither good or bad, its what you do with it"

Welcome to the Bill Gates Net Worth Page

Bill Gates, President and CEO of Microsoft has been rated by Forbes Magazine as the richest man in the world for the last several years. His net worth has reached such astounding levels that we decided to find a way to present it that made sense to the average reader. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- How much is Bill worth right now?

We obviously do not have a full reckoning of everything Bill owns. But we do know that he owns 281,416,470 shares of Microsoft. As of Thu Feb 27 9:34PM Eastern U.S. Time , Microsoft was selling for $96.12. Some simple multiplication tells us that he owns $27,049,751,096.40 worth of Microsoft stock. (That's $27.04 billion.)

By The Way...

Microsoft has a total of 1,195,188,000 shares outstanding, worth a total of $114,881,470,560. (That's $114.88 billion .) Bill's 281,416,470 shares represents 23.54% of Microsoft.

Microsoft's stock was up by $4.125 today. This means that Bill made another $1,160,842,938.75 today. (That's $1.16 billion.)

How Much Money IS That?

According to the US Census Bureau, the population of the US on January 1, 1997 was: 266,499,365. This means that Bill could give $101.5 to every person in the United States.

The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California seats 100,092 people. If it were full, Bill could give $270,248.88 to each person.

What if Bill were a Country?

Let's compare Bill's Net Worth with the Gross Domestic Products of the nations of the world. GDP Data is only current through 1992 since that was the most recent I could find and comes courtesy of the Penn World Tables.

Ranking Country 1992 GDP

1 U.S.A. $4,575,975,000,000 $4.57 trillion 2 Japan $1,873,020,000,000 $1.87 trillion 3 China $1,734,866,000,000 $1.73 trillion 47 New Zealand $39,009,179,000 $39 billion 48 Sri Lanka $38,552,075,000 $38.55 billion 49 Singapore $35,656,154,000 $35.65 billion 50 Ireland $34,182,439,000 $34.18 billion 51 Ecuador $31,195,090,000 $31.19 billion **** Bill Gates $27,049,751,096 $27.04 billion 52 Tunisia $25,885,350,000 $25.88 billion 53 Kenya $23,461,466,000 $23.46 billion 54 Guatemala $21,890,274,000 $21.89 billion 55 Sudan $19,015,296,000 $19.01 billion 56 Dominican Rep. $16,472,250,000 $16.47 billion

And What if Bill Were a Public Company?

While Bill is not a company, and Fortune Magazine's Fortune 500 rates companies on their total annual revenue, it still makes for an interesting comparison...

Ranking Company 1995 Revenue 1 General Motors $168,828,600,000 $168.82 billion 2 Ford Motor $137,137,000,000 $137.13 billion 3 Exxon $110,009,000,000 $110 billion 19 Citicorp $31,690,000,000 $31.69 billion 20 Hewlett-Packard $31,519,000,000 $31.51 billion 21 PepsiCo $30,421,000,000 $30.42 billion 22 Metropolitan Life Insurance $27,977,000,000 $27.97 billion 23 Amoco $27,665,000,000 $27.66 billion *** Bill Gates$ 27,049,751,096 $27.04 billion 24 Motorola $27,037,000,000 $27.03 billion 25 American International Group $25,874,000,000 $25.87 billion 26 ConAgra $24,108,900,000 $24.1 billion 27 Kroger $23,937,800,000 $23.93 billion 28 Dayton Hudson $23,516,000,000 $23.51 billion

Laying Dollar Bills End to End

If you had 27,049,751,096 one dollar bills, and laid them end to end, you would have a line of bills that runs 2,621,294.9 miles. Rand McNally says that it's 2912 miles from New York City to Seattle. Laying bills end to end, you could make that trip 900.1 times. The average distance to the moon is 238,855 miles. You could make that trip 10.974 times. If you spent 24 hours a day laying these bills end to end, and were able to sustain a rate of 2 bills per second, it would take you 428.87 years to complete the job.

That's Heavy, Man!

If you had 27,049,751,096 one dollar bills in a pile, it would weigh quite a bit. 55,203,573.6 pounds or 27,601.7 tons to be precise.

Other Interesting Facts

According to Financial World magazine, the total value of all the Major League teams in all four major US Sports (in 1995) was $13.81 billion. That's only 51.05% of Bill's fortune.

The US National Debt as of January 1, 1997 was $5,315,651,024,876.76. Bill's net worth is only 0.5% of that.