Any changes to the structure of the foundation could have a big impact on its focus.
Adding more people to the board could “democratize the ultimate decision-making process,” at the foundation, said Maribel Morey, a historian of philanthropy and executive director at the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences.
The three-person board is unusually small for a foundation of its size. The Ford Foundation, which is roughly a fifth the size of the Gates Foundation, has 15 members on its board. The Rockefeller Foundation, at a 10th of the size, has no fewer than 12 at any time.
Expanding the board would be a positive, said Morey, and they could use it to increase diversity.
“In this moment it’s a mutually beneficial decision because, at one level the Gates Foundation is under much more scrutiny,” Morey said. “At another level it makes much more sense to include other people in the room when you’re a divorced couple with only one other person on the board.”
The fate of the foundation is just one aspect of the divorce.
Gates, 65, a Microsoft co-founder, is the fourth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $143.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His biggest asset is Cascade, the holding company he created with the proceeds of Microsoft stock sales and dividends that’s run by Larson. Through Cascade, Gates has interests in real estate, energy and hospitality as well as stakes in dozens of public companies, including Canadian National Railway and Deere & Co. The Gateses are also among the largest private landowners in the U.S.
In recent weeks, there have been several transfers of shares worth more than $3 billion from Cascade to French Gates, including Deere, Canadian National Railway Co. and AutoNation Inc.
That’s just a fraction of the approximately $50 billion in public equities reported by the firm.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.