SEATTLE: Have you been itching to match your investing skills against those
of the world's richest man, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates? Well, sharpen
your Wall Street wits, because a contest starting on Monday at the software
giant's MSN.com Internet portal will let you create a make-believe portfolio and
see how it performs against Gates' choices.
Visitors to MSN's MoneyCentral.com personal finance site can register for the
contest and pick four stocks to go up against four picked by Gates, Microsoft
said. For each person who enters, Microsoft said it would donate 50 cents, up to
a maximum of $150,000, to the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, a charity
that pairs up youngsters with role models from the community. The contest, to
run until May 1, will have three rounds, with winners of the first two rounds
taking home $5,000 and the final winner claiming a $10,000 prize.
Gates, whose 15 per cent stake in the company he founded in 1975 amounted to
nearly $48 billion as of last Friday, also has substantial holdings outside of
Microsoft. Although he made his fortune in technology, Gates has invested widely
in other industries through his private investment firm, Cascade Investments LLC.
He has bought into electric utilities, shipbuilders and real estate.
He has also turned into one of the world's foremost philanthropists, having
endowed his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with more than $20 billion to
fight causes like disease in the developing world.
(C) Reuters Limited 2001.