Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos on Monday officially stepped down as the Chief Executive Officer of the e-commerce empire he founded 27 years ago.
The world’s wealthiest man handed over the role to Andy Jassy, in order to focus on “new products and early initiatives”.
Mr Jassy joined the company in 1997 and has led its cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), since 2003.
This is coming five months after Mr Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as the company’s CEO.
Making his announcement, Mr. Bezos said he wanted to “focus [his] energies and attention on new products and early initiatives” in his new role of executive chair.
“This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, ‘What’s the internet?’ Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while,” he wrote in a letter to Amazon employees earlier this year.
“Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.”
Mr Bezos said he would “stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives” but also concentrate on projects away from the day-to-day running of the business in his new position.
He said the move would give him the “time and energy” needed to “focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post” and his “other passions”.
“Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” he said.
Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said “Jeff is not really going anywhere. It’s more of a restructuring of who’s doing what.”
“Bezos also retains just over 10% of all of Amazon’s shares, making him the single largest shareholder and securing his ability to shape the decisions of the new CEO, especially when they disagree about the firm’s strategic direction,” Sky news reported on Monday.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said; “The fact he is stepping down as chief executive of Amazon doesn’t mean he is disappearing; far from it as he is becoming executive chairman.
“The chairman’s role is to keep the chief executive in order, so Bezos will still be ingrained in the business and be able to provide guidance on a range of strategic issues,” he said.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Mr Bezos, 57, has a total net worth of $203 billion and is now expected to devote more of his time towards execution of personal projects.
