From Riches to Rags

(8 of 10)

And to rally more outside help, they started exploiting the media attention Bill inevitably attracts. In January, for example, the Gates Foundation gave $750 million, spread over 10 years, to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) to immunize children in poor countries. Norway pledged $290 million over five years. But every time he spoke to a reporter about his donation, Bill Gates mentioned Norway. "We aimed to have Norway in paragraph one or two in every story," says foundation COO Mathews. This month Norway announced it would give close to $1 billion over 10 years. "When I'm speaking to the press, I'm thinking, Who are the people I should praise?" says Bill. In our interviews he repeatedly mentioned pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and, well, Norway.

The Gateses say their smartest investment yet has been GAVI. This year, when five European nations backed them up with an unprecedented $4 billion over 10 years to fund GAVI's work, it was all about leverage. At Davos, Bill Gates and Bono had tag-team meetings with Blair, Schröder and other leaders, using the example of one as peer pressure for the other. Bill remembers talking to Bono between meetings and telling him he wasn't sure Schröder would come around. Bono was undeterred. "I tend to be a little more realistic," Bill says. "He's always saying, 'Yeah, we can do this!'"

So far, Bono has been more right than wrong, something that still seems to amaze Bill. It's strange to hear him talk about Bono. Bill is not easily impressed; if you're not talking to him at a very high level about science or business, you're wasting his time, and he lets you know it. (In our first interview, he didn't look at me for 15 minutes. Melinda fielded the soft questions he couldn't bear to handle, as she often does.) But Bono talks about global problems on a very high level, and one gets the sense their friendship is one of the great surprises of Bill's life. "It's not about making himself look good," Bill says. "He really reads this stuff; he cares about the complexity."

In April the Gateses had U2 to lunch. "Bono thought it was important for us to get to know the other band members," Bill says. "They give him the license to spend time and credibility on this. This way I could say, 'Look, Bono is really, really having an impact. Things would be very different without him. You should feel superproud about the leniency you're giving Bono to do this.'"

That night the Gateses went to their first U2 concert. The next night they went back to see it again. They were stunned by the way Bono could move thousands of people at a rock concert to vow to make poverty history. "You always worry for him when he gets up onstage to say these things," says Melinda. "Yeah, [we think] Oh, no, these are normal people here!" says Bill. Bono slept at their house, and the three of them stayed up until 3 a.m. scheming about the G-8 summit and listening to Bono's impressions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.