Success makes Jeff Bezos bigger target

Few tycoons have done better than Jeff Bezos since Donald Trump took office. On paper, the Amazon boss’s wealth has increased by more than $60bn. Yet no CEO infuriates the president more. One presidential tweet, mocking his divorce, described Bezos as “Jeff Bozo”. The spat has become even uglier, with Bezos accusing a Trump ally of blackmail. The imbroglio could end up damaging Amazon’s business.

Shareholders hate it when a CEO’s personal life is a bigger story than the company. Bezos’s marital break-up and his battle with National Enquirer owner AMI over an alleged threat to publish intimate photos and texts, is an embarrassing distraction. The Amazon share is down 5%, but the Bezoses may have already put much of their wealth in trust for descendants. There is little chance that half their 16% stake — worth $62bn — will be dumped. Unlike Tesla, Amazon does not depend on a showman CEO for investor support.

Nor is there evidence that Trump’s animosity has damaged Amazon. Bezos acknowledges his ownership of the liberal Washington Post is a “complexifier”. The president’s push for a doubling of the rate charged to ship Amazon packages has had no effect. Amazon Web Services is tipped to win the 10-year, $10bn project to accelerate the Pentagon’s move into cloud computing.

Bezos is seen as a hero by some for taking on Trump’s allies. But the fact that so much of the president’s ire is directed towards a CEO underlines the concentration of power in the hands of a few bosses. Like oil magnate John D Rockefeller, to whom Bezos is sometimes compared by critics, the techies’ wealth makes them targets. Amazon has doubled its lobbying team in tacit validation of this.

Competition policy could be the next battleground. Pushes into markets where regulatory consent matters, such as health care, have just become a little more difficult. / London, February 11