KUALA LUMPUR: Bill and Melinda Gates claimed the top spot on a Wealth-X list of the world’s wealthiest couples released today, with a combined net worth of US$85.7 billion.
Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975, married Melinda, a Microsoft employee, in 1994. The couple have two daughters and one son.
In 2000, they set up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which gives primarily to agricultural development, health, educational and other social causes. In 2010, the couple joined billionaire investor Warren Buffett to form the Giving Pledge – a campaign to spur the world's wealthiest individuals to commit the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.
Spanish retail tycoon Amancio Ortega Gaona and his second wife, Flora Pérez, took the number two spot on the list with a combined net worth of US$70.7 billion. Ortega married Flora in 2001, and she currently serves as vice president of the Amancio Ortega Foundation. Ortega has three children – two from his first marriage, and one with Pérez.
The youngest couple on the Wealth-X list is Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (31 years old) and Priscilla Chan (30 years old). They boast a combined net worth of US$38.5 billion. The couple met at Harvard in 2004 and were married in a low-key, simple wedding ceremony in their Palo Alto home in 2012.
Below are the world’s top 10 wealthiest couples:
1 - Bill and Melinda Gates (US$85.7b - self-made)
2 - Amancio Ortega Gaona and Flora Pérez (US$70.7b - self-made)
3 - Warren Bufffet and Astrid Menks (US$65.0b - self-made)
4 - David and Julia Koch (US$47.5b - inheritance)
5 - Charles and Elizabeth Koch (US$47.4b - inheritance)
6 - Wang Jianlin and Lin Ning (US$40.7b - self-made)
7 - Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos (US$39.8b - self-made)
8 - Bernard Arnault and Helene Mercier (US$38.7b - inheritance)
9 - Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (US$38.5b - self-made)
10 - James and Lynne Walton (US$36.2b - inheritance)
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