Jeff Hands Over The Reins

Amazon’s new man in charge is a sports fanatic who doesn’t suffer fools gladly

- Dennis Cavernelis

His name is synonymous with Amazon, the online shopping behemoth that has made him one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world.

But all good things must come to an end – and Jeff Bezos is taking a step down from the top job to do other things dear to his heart. Like exploring outer space.

If he has his way, his space travel company, Blue Origin, will “get millions of people living and working in space”.

And when you have a guy as determined – and rich – as this one with an idea, it may well come to fruition.

After all, Jeff(57) started Amazon as an online bookshop from his garage in 1994 and built it into a $1,7 trillion (R25,5tn) mega-company that employs more than one million people.

Right now, he’s worth a staggering $188 billion (R2,82tn), second only on the global rich list to Elon Musk.

As much as he’s enjoyed his years at Amazon, he’s ready for a new challenge.

“If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention the new thing has become normal,” he said shortly after announcing he’d be stepping down as CEO. “People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can achieve.”

Jeff will be taking up a newly created position as Amazon’s executive chairman in July, handing the day-to-day running of the business to Andy Jassy, who’s in charge of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS is the company’s cloud computing operation and Andy (53) is credited with building it into the online powerhouse it has become – it’s worth $10bn (R150bn) and dominates a third of the cloud computing market, more than double its nearest competitor, Microsoft Azure.