Bill Gates sells 7% shares in McDonald’s on fear of pandemic

Charles Abuede

Cascade Investment, an investment firm owned by Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, has divested its shares in Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc., the world’s largest independent franchisee of Macdonald’s Corp, exiting the holding owned by the firm for more than five years.

According to filings by the Macdonald’s franchisee to the equity bourse and the US regulatory authorities, the Bill Gates’s investment firm sold its shares having previously held a stake of about seven per cent in the firm, which is now worth almost $40 million.

Also, the charitable trust owned by Bill Gate, which also held about 2.4 per cent of the company’s shares, has sold out its shares to exit the firm.

Cascade Investment and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are believed to have initially invested in Arcos Dorados, the operator of McDonald’s stores across Latin America and the Caribbean, earlier in 2014. Currently, the shares in the Montevideo, Uruguay-based Company, whose name means “Golden Arches” in Spanish, have witnessed a fall by more than 50 percent.

Similarly, in August this year, Arcos Dorados announced a sixty per cent drop in revenue, after being hurt by the coronavirus pandemic, for the three months ended June 30 from a year earlier while the company’s shares have tumbled 47 per cent this year.

Meanwhile, Gates has carried forward his proceeds from Microsoft into a global empire of listed assets through Cascade Investment, which ranged from railroads to agricultural businesses to construction firms, Bloomberg reported.