Amazon´s Jeff Bezos, wife MacKenzie reach divorce deal

WASHINGTON: Wrapping up their painful split, the world’s richest couple revealed the terms of their divorce on Thursday, resolving questions about the direction of the world’s largest online retailer that have abounded since the couple announced their divorce in January. Jeff Bezos will retain company control.

MacKenzie,  ex-wife of Amazon’s founder and chief executive officer Jeff, will give 75%  stake in the company and all voting rights to the billionaire entrepreneur.

Jeff Bezos, widely known as a management guru whose long-term focus has been essential to Amazon's meteoric stock rise, will retain company control.

Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. The agreement does not make McKenzie the richest woman in the world, as speculation has suggested it might. She will have to get along on the proceeds of her stake, estimated at $36bn at current market prices.

Jeff Bezos, 55, and MacKenzie, 48, a novelist, married in 1993 and have four children. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in their Seattle garage in 1994 and turned it into a colossus that dominates online retail.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Amazon, which has a market capitalization of some $890 billion, said MacKenzie Bezos will control four percent of the company´s outstanding common stock.

According to Forbes magazine, the divorce settlement makes MacKenzie Bezos the third wealthiest woman in the world after L´Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and Walmart´s Alice Walton.

Jeff Bezos, who now owns 12 percent of Amazon, remains the world´s richest man and the largest shareholder in the company with an estimated fortune of $110 billion, Forbes said, ahead of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett.

As part of the terms of their divorce, MacKenzie Bezos will also relinquish all her interests in the Washington Post newspaper, which her then husband snapped up for a mere $250m in a surprise deal in 2013, and rocket company Blue Origin, she said in a tweet on Thursday.

“Happy to be giving him all of my interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin, and 75 percent of our Amazon stock,” MacKenzie Bezos said in the tweet.