Jeff Bezos leaves Amazon management and leaves his place to his right-hand man Andy Jassy
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos during a presentation by his company Blue Origin on May 9, 2019 in Washington.
AP - Patrick Semansky
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
This Sunday is the last day for Jeff Bezos at the head of Amazon.
His right arm Andy Jassy, is to succeed him this Monday at the general management of the group.
The 57-year-old businessman, who will sit on the board of directors of the global e-commerce giant, has built his empire from scratch.
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It was in his Seattle garage that 25-year-old Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, with the ambition of creating "
the largest bookstore in the world
".
It was in 1994 and if the online commerce giant will take several years to take off, it is worth today, 27 years later, 1,700 billion dollars on the stock market.
The company, whose sales exploded with the pandemic, has since expanded its offer to artificial intelligence, groceries, streaming video, film production.
Hailed for his innovations, the richest man in the world is also singled out for his aggressive business practices towards his rivals and towards his employees.
But he is a man who "
has the instinct to find what will work
" in the next market, recognizes Roger Kay, analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.
The company has supplanted its rivals by choosing the early years to "
reinvest all profits in growth,
" recalls Roger Kay.
A strategy which has sometimes left investors perplexed but which now "
appears completely logical
", he underlines.
A new turn
His company's fortune has also been his own:
even after having sold
part of his shares in Amazon
to his ex-wife
after his divorce, Jeff Bezos is currently worth around $ 200 billion according to Forbes magazine.
Jeff Bezos will take a new turn and
hand over to his right arm
Andy Jassy who will take his place as the group's general manager.
He thus gives up the day-to-day management of his company to spend more time on other projects such as his other company Blue Origin - which will make his first space tourism flight on July 20
with Jeff Bezos himself on board
.
The businessman also owns the
Washington Post
newspaper
and has said he wants to devote time and money to the fight against climate change.
Jassy, Bezos' trusted man
With an MBA from Harvard University in hand, Andy Jassy joined the Seattle company in 1997 as marketing director.
The site is then only an online bookstore which has all the same already made its IPO on the Nasdaq.
This discreet man quickly became a technical advisor and Jeff Bezos' right-hand man.
A few years later, this technophile passionate about hockey, created with his boss a Cloud Computing activity for individuals and companies.
Amazon Web Service was born.
Andy Jassy will take the reins in 2016 of the more profitable activity of the company.
Although not as rich as Jeff Bezos, this father of two, married to a fashion designer at Eddie Bauer, has a fortune of $ 377 million.
“
He will be an exceptional leader and he has my full confidence,
” said Jeff Bezos.
Among other things, he will have to develop the group's diversification, particularly in the world of streaming video and cinema.
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