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- The world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, is making a change at its peak.
- Company founder Jeff Bezos will hand over the presidency to Andy Jassy, head of the burgeoning cloud business, in the third quarter of 2021.
- This was announced by Amazon after the US stock market closed in Seattle.
- After that, Bezos is likely to continue to exert great influence as CEO of the board of directors over and above the executive board.
The 57-year-old senior manager founded Amazon in 1994 and turned an online bookstore company into a billion-dollar group. With an estimated fortune of 188 billion dollars (168 billion Swiss francs), Bezos is currently the second richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Main quarterly figures despite Corona
At the same time, the company presented figures for the fourth quarter and last fiscal year that far exceeded market expectations. In the three months to the end of December, Amazon topped the $ 100 billion mark for the first time thanks to an order boom in the Corona crisis and a strong Christmas business. Compared to the same period last year, sales increased 44 percent to $ 125.6 billion.
Amazon could more than double its net profit at $ 7.2 billion (€ 6.4 billion). In fiscal year 2020, the group earned $ 21.3 billion, an increase of 84 percent and a new record.
Cloud business remains the flagship
Once again, the online giant greatly benefited from its cloud business with IT services and internet storage space. The AWS platform, led by future CEO Jassy and used by many businesses and applications, increased its quarterly sales by 28 percent to $ 12.7 billion, and therefore remained somewhat below expectations.
Operating profit, meanwhile, was up 37 percent to $ 3.6 billion, clearly showing how attractive profit-maker Amazon’s cloud flagship remains.
