Gates puts CN in his toy chest
(The following article by Brent Jang was posted on the Globe and Mail website on April 3.)
TORONTO – Already the world’s richest man, Bill Gates has chugged his way to the top of another list as the largest shareholder in Canadian National Railway Co.
In a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Microsoft Corp. chairman and founder disclosed that he holds nearly 30.91 million CN shares through Cascade Investment LLC, or a 5.8-per-cent stake now worth $1.63-billion.
That’s enough to place Mr. Gates ahead of major institutional investors such as Fidelity Investments, Barclays PLC, Wellington Management Co., and the mutual fund arm of Bank of Montreal.
As well, in a $234-million joint holding with his wife, Melinda, the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation owns another 4.42 million shares in Canada’s largest railway.
In total, the Gates family’s 35.33 million CN shares are worth $1.87-billion, based on their closing price of $52.92 Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. That works out to 6.6 per cent of Montreal-based CN’s market value of $28.37-billion.
Mr. Gates has slowly but steadily emerged as the railway’s top shareholder by sticking with CN and adding to his portfolio while the leading institutional investors gradually trimmed their positions in recent years.
It’s unclear when he began buying CN stock, but by the fall of 2000, through Cascade, he managed to accumulate 29.7 million shares (adjusted for subsequent stock splits), securities filings show.
Roger Cameron, a spokesman for the Railway Association of Canada, said Mr. Gates must have recognized early on that the railway sector has grown beyond its Old Economy roots to join the high-tech age.
“Many people don’t fully appreciate the technology in the modern railroad,” Mr. Cameron said. "About 40 per cent of the value of a modern locomotive is in the computer and information s