Marriage that produced Amazon ends
NEW YORK — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his former wife, MacKenzie Bezos, have completed their divorce and are dividing up their stake in Amazon, leaving each of them with a piece of the online shopping giant worth billions of dollars.
In government filings, Amazon disclosed that Jeff Bezos’s stake in the company was cut to about 12 per cent from 16 per cent after completing his divorce and selling nearly $2 billion US worth of stock. His current stake is worth nearly $110 billion US. Jeff Bezos remains the company’s largest shareholder.
MacKenzie Bezos now has a four per cent stake in Amazon, worth more than $37 billion. She announced in May that she planned to give away at least half of her fortune to charity.
Amazon.com Inc. did not respond to a request for comment. The divorce ends a 25-year marriage that played a pivotal role in the start of the e-commerce company.
Shortly after they married in 1993, Jeff Bezos quit his job at a hedge fund in New York and the two of them took a road trip to Seattle.
With his wife at the wheel, Jeff Bezos wrote a business plan for an online book store. By July 1995, Amazon was operating out of a garage.
The Bezoses announced they were divorcing in January, just before the National Enquirer published a story that said Jeff Bezos was having an affair with a former television host.
Jeff Bezos later accused the tabloid’s publisher of threatening to publish explicit photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the Enquirer obtained private messages between himself and his lover.
The National Enquirer denied the allegations.