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Bill Gates’ biggest U.S. stock investments have surged in 2023’s bull market. Shares of Republic Services and Ecolab, in which he owns large stakes, have risen to records.
Justin Tallis/Getty Images
Bill Gates
has made billions of dollars in his biggest U.S. stock investments in 2023’s bull market, as some shares of companies in which he owns large stakes have risen to records.
Cascade Investment, an investment vehicle for Gates, co-founder of
Microsoft
(ticker: MSFT), owns about 35% of
Republic Services
(RSG), 21% of
AutoNation
(AN), 11% of
Ecolab
(ECL), and about 7% of
Deere
(DE). Those investments make Gates the largest shareholder of waste and recycling firm Republic Services, car dealer AutoNation, Ecolab—a provider of water-treatment, hygiene, and infection-prevention goods and services—and heavy-machinery maker Deere.
Cascade owns 110 million Republic Services shares, 9.9 million AutoNation shares, 31.1 million Ecolab shares, and 20 million Deere shares. Gates also owns another 5.2 million Ecolab shares and 3.9 million Deere shares through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, but the Cascade positions alone make him the largest shareholder in those companies.
In fact, Cascade’s positions in those four companies have shot up by $4 billion in the first half of the year. Excluding the investment in Deere stock, the only one that has slipped in 2023, Cascade’s investments in Republic Services, AutoNation, and…
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