Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of Amazon, has reportedly announced that he intends to step down as chief executive of the leading e-commerce giant, which he had started in his garage almost 30 years ago. Bezos would now take over the role of executive chairman; this would give him more time as well as energy to focus on other ventures. 

Bezos, who has a $200 billion fortune, would be replaced by Andy Jassy, who at present leads the cloud computing business of Amazon. Amazon stated that the change is likely to take place in the second half of 2021.

As per the Forbes' list of billionaires, Jeff Bezos accumulated a fortune of $196.2 billion, making him the richest man of the globe. But recently, billionaire index of Bloomberg has put Tesla CEO, Elon Musk just ahead of him.

Last year, the leading e-commerce giant had seen its already explosive growth hit the roof, as the global pandemic caused a rise in online shopping. In 2020, Amazon reported around $386 billion (£283bn) in sales, up from 38% from 2019. In fact, the profits nearly doubled, surging to $21.3 billion.

The company is facing growing scrutiny from several regulators that are questioning the company’s monopoly power over the market. Additionally, its dominant presence in cloud computing is also being challenged more and more by other tech companies like Alphabet, parent firm of Google and YouTube, as well as Microsoft.

The decision by Jeff Bezos to hand over the company’s day to day operations came in as a big surprise. Consequently, investors were not surprised with the small change in Amazon’s share price in after-hours trade.

Andy Jassy, a graduate from Harvard, has been with the firm since 1997 and helped in the development of Amazon Web Services, which has been one of the profit engines of Amazon. The division provides cloud computing and storage for governments as well as firms like Netflix and McDonald's.

Source credit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55912878