Icon: enlarge
Jeff Bezos: Hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental organizations
Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos will sell a surprising number of stocks in 2020.
The founder of the world's largest internet retailer sold more than three billion dollars worth of shares in his company this week.
This emerges from mandatory reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to SEC data, Bezos has already cashed in more than $ 10.2 billion in Amazon shares this year.
The exact reasons for the current sale are unclear.
In the past, however, he had announced that he would invest one billion dollars a year in his rocket start-up "Blue Origin", and he also announced that he would invest billions in coping with the consequences of climate change.
"The Atlantic" reported this week that Bezos wanted to give several environmental organizations $ 100 million each.
$ 1.6 trillion market value
The 56-year-old star entrepreneur founded Amazon in 1994 and is still the largest single shareholder in the world's largest internet retailer.
With an estimated fortune of around $ 190 billion, Bezos is the richest person in the world, according to Forbes and Bloomberg Billionaires.
Amazon last had a market value of $ 1.6 trillion.
The share price has risen by over 75 percent since the beginning of the year.
Worldwide corona lockdowns caused the online retailer's business to boom, and the cloud business is also flourishing thanks to home work and high demand for storage space.
There had also been major share movements in 2019 after Bezos divorced MacKenzie Scott.
The ex-wife of the Amazon boss then received shares valued at $ 36 billion.
As a result of the shares obtained through the divorce, which are still worth significantly more today, Scott became the richest woman in the world.
After her divorce from Bezos, Scott had announced that she would donate at least half of her billion dollar fortune.
She joined the initiative "The Giving Pledge", as the organization announced at the time.
The signatories undertake to donate at least half of their assets to charitable purposes during their lifetime or in their will.
Icon: The mirror
apr / dpa
