Jeff Bezos will hand over the post to Andy Jassy in the third quarter of 2021, but will remain influential as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Jeff Bezos is stepping down as Amazon boss this year, but remains boss of the board of directors.
Jeff Bezos founded an online bookstore in a garage near Seattle around 27 years ago. From his fascination for the Internet and a great vision, one of the most valuable corporations in the world emerged: Amazon.
After more than a quarter of a century, the world's largest online retailer is now initiating the change at its top management – Bezos will hand over the chairmanship to Andy Jassy, the head of the booming cloud business, in the third quarter of 2021.
The cloud division
Meanwhile, Amazon's biggest profit driver is not online trading, but the cloud business with IT services and storage space on the Internet. In this respect, it is only logical that Andy Jassy, the head of this division, has been promoted to future CEO. Amazon's cloud platform AWS, which is used by many companies and apps, increased quarterly sales by 28 percent by 12.7 billion dollars.
Despite the strong growth, the business remained somewhat below expectations. Operating profit climbed 37 percent to $ 3.6 billion, which clearly shows what an attractive profit maker Amazon's cloud flagship continues to be.
Bezos stays with Amazon
An era does not end there, Bezos wants to keep getting involved. Amazon's annual report for 2020, published on Tuesday after the US stock market closed, became a minor matter in view of the large number of personnel.
As executive chairman of the board of directors, who is superordinate to the board of directors, Bezos is likely to continue to exert a lot of influence at Amazon in the future. In a memo to the employees, the 57-year-old stated that his decision was not about retiring. “I've never had more energy,” said Bezos. In his future role as Chairman of the Board of Directors, he wants to focus his energy and attention on new products and initiatives. He also gains more time for other projects such as his foundations, his space company Blue Origin or the newspaper “The Washington Post”, which is privately owned.
Outgrown the garage
On July 5, 1994, Jeff and his then-wife MacKenzie Bezos founded an online bookstore in Bellevue near Seattle. The company was initially called Cadabra, but was quickly renamed Amazon. According to Bezos's 2013 biography “The Seller of Everything”, Cadabra sounded too much like a cadaver. What started with books grew into the largest internet department store in the world. Today, Amazon is much more than that and keeps countless companies running with its cloud services, which offer start-ups IT applications and online storage space. With Whole Foods, Amazon also operates its own US supermarket chain.
But that's not all: In the streaming business, Amazon is trying to compete with the market leader Netflix with its Prime service; With the establishment of its own delivery logistics, the group is putting parcel delivery companies such as UPS, Fedex and DHL under pressure. And nobody really knows which industries Amazon will stir up next. Bezos made the success of his company as a major shareholder filthy rich. With an estimated fortune of 197 billion dollars (almost 163.6 billion euros) he is currently the second wealthiest person in the world behind Tesla boss Elon Musk according to the “Bloomberg Billionaires Index” (as of Wednesday).
Amazon on the stock exchange
The rapidly expanding Bezos group had a long time on the stock market because of chronically red numbers. But since Bezos has been reliably delivering profits, he has become the darling of Wall Street. In September 2018, Amazon became the second public company after the iPhone giant Apple to crack the magic mark of one trillion dollars in market value. Since then, it has continued to rise sharply – Amazon's market capitalization was last at an enormous $ 1.7 trillion. The news of Bezos' resignation did not shock investors on Tuesday evening either – the share remained in positive territory in after-hours trading.
Because business was also brilliant in the final quarter of 2020: In the three months to the end of December, Amazon cracked the $ 100 billion mark for the first time thanks to the order boom in the corona crisis and a strong Christmas business. Compared to the same period last year, sales increased 44 percent to $ 125.6 billion. Amazon was able to more than double its net profit to 7.2 billion dollars. In the entire 2020 fiscal year, the company earned $ 21.3 billion, an 84 percent increase and a new record.
criticism
Through his success with Amazon, Bezos has by far not only made friends. The group is accused of destroying the retail sector with its great market power and low prices. There is also frequent criticism of Amazon because of controversial working conditions.
The most powerful enemy of Bezos, however, was still in the White House until recently: Ex-US President Donald Trump and he had a bitter long-term feud. The main reason was not so much business, but rather Trump's dislike of the Washington Post, which often reports critically about him.
