Bill Gates Bets $84M on Ethanol

When the richest man in the world invests $84 million in a company, you can be sure Wall Street notices.

That’s why Neil Koehler, president and chief executive of Pacific Ethanol Inc. (Research), was looking as if he had won the Powerball jackpot on Tuesday.

“It gave us instant credibility and the equity financing to be very credible and real with our (business) plan,” he said of the investment by Bill Gates, the Microsoft Corp. (Research) founder, whose personal fortune of $46.5 billion topped Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest again this year.
CNN Money