They're currently pegging Gates at sitting on $43 billion in cash out of his $90.8 billion total fortune. His investment vehicle, Cascade, is well known; I assume that's one way Bloomberg is attempting to keep tabs on the cash level. I've occasionally checked Bill's numbers on the Bloomberg Billionaire's list, I don't recall his cash level ever being so high. You can essentially guarantee that if the $43b is even remotely accurate, nobody else on earth is topping that (save for an extraordinarily rich leader / royalty, but even then $43b is immense).
Most of the richest billionaires have their wealth heavily tied up in one or a few businesses. Gates, among the hyper billionaires, is rare in the sense that he's basically sitting on a giant investment portfolio at this point, meaning he can turn most of it to cash dramatically easier than his peers.
Berkshire Hathaway is really just a bunch of separate businesses tied together by Warren Buffet and the quick access to the pile of cash Berkshire Hathaway has. Exception proves the rule I guess.
I used to work a night shift in a cash depot that routinely stored over £200m. It was famously the subject of a heist, and the robbers only quit at £30m because they couldn't fit any more in. That was a lot of money.
I feel like it might be fun (though ultimately utterly utterly worthless) to make a kind of 'best guess' one. I have genuinely no idea where one would start...
Are you kidding? (..not being sarcastic). Drug lords don't strike me as having quite the wealth that Gates has. Hell, I'd even assume drug lords pale in comparison to some oil Princes, but at least that's a more even comparison perhaps. Gates just has so much money that it's nearly beyond comprehension.
But, I don't know any of this, just speculating. Do you know more?
> Drug lords don't strike me as having quite the wealth that Gates has
Escobar at his height had an estimated wealth of $30bn - with inflation that is very much in the same ballpark.
And he had a huge share of his wealth in cash - you might know the anecdote that his operation spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to bundle up cash...
Nobody knows what the wealth of today's global drug kingpins is, but I would be surprised if El Chapo Guzmán weren't worth tens of billions.
> Escobar at his height had an estimated wealth of $30bn - with inflation that is very much in the same ballpark.
Wow, that is very shocking! I frankly thought there was too much chaos to obtain >$10bn. Hell, I'd even be impressed with >$1bn. Guess I don't give them enough credit, and I also give countries ability to manage the crime lords too much credit.
He's talking about liquidity rich as in cash rich. Bezos and Zuck have a majority of their wealth in stock. Pablo Escobar supposedly made 10+ billion a year, mostly in cash. I'm pretty confident the person holding the most cash in the world is a drug lord or criminal. Anyone who's worth 100m (via legitimate means) would not be holding that much cash
Holding your money in cash can be an extraordinarily good idea.
See: 2007-2009.
Gates for example, is dedicating his wealth to important causes such as eliminating malaria. If he does something foolish and rides a massive stock market bubble back down while he's fully invested, that could mean $30 or $40 billion less for attacking such problems in the next 10-20 years (there's no guarantee the market will come back to these levels soon, it could take a decade or multiple decades).
If the market drops and stays low, he could easily be put into a situation where it's again time to perform some asset liquidation for funding purposes for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That is, those market 'losses' would become non-recoverable at that point.
Sitting on $90.8 billion as he is, there is a good argument to be had given how high this market is, that that's a vast amount of money for him to distribute versus his age. He has N time left in his life, and an incredibly sum to dispose of yet and he isn't making nearly enough progress on that front versus his standing wealth.
Between Gates & Buffett, and assuming modest growth in their current wealth levels, the Gates Foundation has to figure out how to productively distribute perhaps $250+ billion yet over 25-30 years. The target was to do so in Bill / Melinda's lifetimes, then they shifted it to within a decade or two of their passing. That's not going to happen, they have too much money and can't dispose of it fast enough.
The stock market presently trading at an extremely elevated multiple is not subtle (much less while simultaneously US GDP growth is averaging historic lows, and global growth is just OK). Simply put, stocks have soared without the earnings to support the move, it's overwhelmingly multiple expansion.
It doesn't require a magic 8-ball to be prudent and lighten up after the S&P and Dow have tripled from the bottom in 8 years.
