Bill Gates - worth $130bn - transferred $1.8bn in stocks to his wife Melinda the day they announced their divorce

Bill Gates transferred $1.8billion in stock to his wife Melinda the day they announced their divorce in what appears to be the first of many public transactions the pair will make as they start to divide up their extraordinary assets.

The Microsoft founder is the fourth richest man in the world with an estimated fortune of $130billion. 

He and Melinda have been married for 27 years and have three adult children, but announced in a joint statement on Monday they were parting ways. 

She said in court filings that the marriage was 'irretrievably broken'. The pair's divorce settlement hasn't been finalized in court but they have agreed on a some of the terms of their separation. It's likely that the pair will settle privately, and that the only glimpses into their division of assets will come from SEC filings about how many shares they own in public companies. 

One such filing on Monday revealed that Bill gave Melinda more than 14million shares of the Canadian National Railway Company worth $1.5billion. He also gave her 2.9 million shares of AutoNation.