Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO

On Tuesday, Jeff Bezos announced that he would be stepping down from his position as chief executive at Amazon to pursue his other ventures.

Mr Bezos will leave the position to become the executive chair of the Amazon Board during Q3 of 2021.

In a letter, he told employees that this isn’t a retirement, that he’s “never had more energy”, but that he want the time and energy to focus on his other organisations, such as the Earth Fund, Blue Origin and The Washington Post.

He said that Amazon was well-positioned for the future, “firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to,” and that it has “things in the pipeline that will continue to astonish.”

Andy Jassy will take over as CEO of the company. 

Mr Jassy has worked at Amazon since 1997. He currently leads Amazon Web Services, the company’s booming cloud business division.

Mr Bezos’ announcement came just before the company released a record-breaking quarterly report, which revealed that in the wake of new lockdowns in Q4 2020, it breached the €100 billion revenue milestone, joining Apple, which announced it had achieved it at their earnings report last week. 

Amazon shareholders’ confidences to not seem to have been shaken by Mr Bezos’ announcement, or if they have been, the impact was mitigated by the promising earnings report. In after-hours trading, shares in the Company were largely stable.