Microsoft CEO Gates Doesn't Own Everything … Yet

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 27, 2001 | by John Elvin

James Nesfield, a friend of this column who helps untangle the mysteries of high technology and finance, sends along a public notice issued in Washington state approving, "subject to certain conditions," the purchase of voting securities in Avista Corp., Otter Tail Power Corp. and the Public Service Company of New Mexico by Cascade Investment. Put another way, multibillionaire Bill Gates is buying into public utilities.

Actually, there doesn't seem to be much that Gates isn't buying. News items have noted his purchases of stock in firms including Seattle Genetics, a cancer-vaccine research firm; Florida-based Republic Services, a waste hauler; Pan American Silver, a Canadian mining company; Chaparral Resources, a Texas oil company; Alaska Air Group; Liberty Satellite and Technology; and Boca Resorts. Certainly there are many other investments in Gates' secretive Cascade portfolio, but little of the information is made public. It is known that Gates has a stake in a firm developing ways to treat erectile dysfunction and another that is developing a painkiller with actions resembling those of opium.

What intrigues Nesfield about the public-utility purchases is that Gates is playing on a field subject to intense federal scrutiny. "It's as though he's feeling immortal after the antitrust stalemate. Energy could not be more political, and yet he jumps right into the fire," Nesfield, a financial consultant based in Nags Head, N.C., tells Insight. Due to his incredible wealth, the millions of dollars Gates has pumped into company stocks represent a fraction of his investments. Most of his investment money, analysts say, is in corporate and government bonds.