Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO
The head of the multinational company's web services, Andy Jassy, will be his replacement
BarcelonaAlmost 30 years after founding Amazon, tycoon Jeff Bezos will no longer be at the helm of the e-commerce platform. The American company announced on Tuesday night during the presentation of the results of the closing of 2020 that he will step aside and that from now on he will only occupy the position of executive chairman.
From the third quarter of this year, Bezos will pass the baton to Andy Jassy, until now head of Amazon Web Services. Thus, the founder of Amazon will no longer be the top executive of the company and, therefore, will no longer deal with the operational management of the business. Bezos, 57, created the company as an online bookstore in 1995 - in the beginning it was called cadrabra.com - to become a giant that the year of the pandemic billed 386,000 million dollars.
"Amazon is what it is thanks to invention", the businessman said in a statement on Tuesday. Bezos highlighted the platform's philosophy of doing "crazy things together and making them normal". "When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition", he explained to justify his departure as CEO.
In the new role of executive chairman, Bezos will focus his efforts on "new products and early-stage initiatives." In addition, he will still serve on the board of directors. "I've never had so much energy, this is not about retiring", the world's richest man insisted, who has a fortune of $196 billion according to Forbes magazine. In this sense, Bezos also highlighted the trajectory of Andy Jassy within Amazon and predicted that he will be an "excellent leader" for the company.
The turnover has soared 38% in 2020
In the latest financial results, the platform turned over $125 billion in a single quarter, coinciding with the Christmas campaign. The covid has taken sales to the internet like never before and Amazon's annual turnover soared 38% compared to 2019. As for profits, they stood at 21.3 billion. While the pandemic has closed million of stores, Amazon hired 400,000 employees in its warehouses in 2020.