Bill Gates admits extramarital affair with an employee

Bill Gates had an affair with a Microsoft engineer about six years after he married Melinda, a representative for the billionaire has acknowledged.

Bill and Melinda Gates at the Elysee Palace, Paris, in 2017. Picture: Getty Images

Bill Gates had an affair with a Microsoft engineer about six years after he married Melinda, a representative for the billionaire has acknowledged.

The affair and other claims about the billionaire’s conduct with female employees have emerged a fortnight after the couple announced that they would divorce, dividing a marital fortune estimated to be worth $US124bn ($159bn).

Microsoft issued a statement confirming that it had been notified “in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000”. It said that a law firm had been hired to investigate and that the company “provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern”.

Mr Gates stepped down from the board in March last year, before the investigation was completed and before the board had reached a decision on the matter, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the matter.

The board had been notified by a female engineer in a letter that asked for changes to her job at Microsoft and also divulged details of the affair, the paper said, citing anonymous sources. It said this employee asked that Melinda Gates be shown her letter, though it was not clear whether this had happened.

Some board members were said to have grown concerned that the relationship was inappropriate and might reflect badly on the company in the wake of the MeToo movement.

A representative for Mr Gates said his decision to step down last year had nothing to do with the investigation. “There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably,” the person said. “Bill’s decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this. He had expressed an interest in spending more time on his philanthropy starting several years earlier.”

In a statement at the time, Mr Gates said he had decided to step down from the boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway “to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities”. He said he would remain engaged with the technical leadership of Microsoft.

Mr Gates founded Microsoft in 1975 with a childhood friend, Paul Allen, and built it into one of the largest companies in the world. Melinda, who was an employee at Microsoft, has said that he asked her out when they met each other in a company car park.

They married in 1994. Mr Gates is alleged to have occasionally showed an interest in other women at Microsoft in the years afterwards. A woman who had given a presentation that he attended later received an email from him asking her to dinner, adding: “If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened,” according to The New York Times, which cited two anonymous sources. A woman who worked for his charitable foundation told the paper that Mr Gates had turned to her while they were at a cocktail party and said: “I want to see you. Will you have dinner with me?”

It said that while some employees of the company and his foundation disapproved, they did not think his behaviour was predatory as Mr Gates did not pressure the women and appeared to think he was giving them space to refuse.

In response to the claims made by The New York Times, a spokeswoman for Mr Gates said: “It is extremely disappointing that there have been so many untruths published about the cause, the circumstances and the timeline of Bill Gates’s divorce.” She added: “The claim of mistreatment of employees is also false. The rumours and speculation surrounding Gates’s divorce are becoming increasingly absurd and it’s unfortunate that people who have little to no knowledge of the situation are being characterised as ‘sources’.”

The couple have said they intend to continue working with their philanthropic foundation. “We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives,” they said this month.

The Times