Status: 05.07.2021 2:42 p.m.
An era ends at Amazon today: founder and boss Jeff Bezos is stepping down. Andy Jassy, who previously headed the successful cloud division, will be the new boss. Bezos left him with a few worries.
By Thomas Spinnler,
tagesschau.de
Jeff Bezos started Amazon, an online bookstore, on July 5, 1994 in a Seattle garage. 27 years later, on July 5, 2021, he will step down as the richest person in the world. “At this moment we are experiencing Amazon at the height of its innovative capacity, this is the optimal moment for change at the top,” the multi-billionaire emphasized when he announced the change in February of this year.
57-year-old Bezos will not enjoy wealth and retirement: “I’ve never had more energy.” Among other things, he will stick it in his favorite subject of space travel. Two online petitions are currently running on the Internet with the aim of refusing him to return to earth after his planned space flight. But Bezos has other plans. He will remain with the group as chairman of the board of directors and thus continue to have a say in the fate of the technology company.
No longer just online retailers
But from now on Andy Jassy will be in charge of operational responsibility at the top of the company. Amazon started out as an online retailer and is still often referred to as that today. At best, that’s half the story. Jassy played a big part in this. The now 53-year-old landed at Amazon in May 1997 immediately after studying business administration at Harvard. In 2006 he founded the cloud business Amazon Web Services (AWS) with its IT and storage services at Amazon.
Jassy recognized early on the importance of the cloud infrastructure as a motor for the digitization of companies and other institutions. He succeeded in making the division the market leader in this segment. In terms of global market share, AWS is well ahead of competitors such as Microsoft, Google or the Chinese technology group Alibaba.
Cloud business as a profit driver
The corona pandemic has accelerated digitization once again, so that Amazon is currently not only benefiting from the boom in online trade. The cloud is more than just another important Amazon business such as entertainment or your own supermarket chain – it is the most profitable pillar of the entire group.
The platform’s revenue climbed 32 percent year over year to 13.5 billion in the past quarter. Operating income rose 35 percent to $ 4.2 billion. With this, AWS recently delivered almost half of the operating profit of the entire group. The bottom line is that the success of Jassy’s division will help finance other projects and the Group’s overall growth plans.
Amazon, Bezos’ money printing machine
But where does Amazon still want to grow? That’s a question Jassy has to answer. The company employs well over a million people worldwide. With a current market value of around 1,500 billion euros, Amazon is also one of the most valuable companies in the world – and one of the most powerful.
Bezos himself made it to the richest person in the world thanks to the success of his company with private assets of around $ 200 billion. For Jassy, the top job will also pay off: the new CEO will receive 61,000 Amazon shares over the next ten years, which are currently priced at more than $ 200 million. Exactly how much they will be worth depends on the development of the share price.
As successful as it is controversial
With Amazon, Jassy is not only taking over one of the most successful companies in the world, but also one of the most controversial. Bezos put a few controversial topics in his successor’s filing for the purpose of resubmission after his departure. Among other things, the problems that Bezos left him with the supervisory and antitrust authorities of the world are waiting on Jassy’s desk to be processed. The tech giant is currently threatened with a feud with the authorities of the Biden government. The Federal Cartel Office is also concerned about Amazon’s market power.
Jassy would also have to do a lot for the reputation of Amazon, because the complaints about the bad treatment and lousy pay of the employees persist. Jassy will have to spend a lot of energy in Amazon’s relationship with society as a whole and with global regulators, the Financial Times quoted a former AWS employee as saying.
Constantly reinventing
In addition, the important AWS division is currently the global market leader; However, the lead is by no means cemented, as technology giants like Microsoft and Google, which are used to success, are doing everything to catch up in the lucrative cloud business. Eventually, that would mean AWS profits melt away – and that’s where a large part of Amazon’s total profit depends.
At a company event in December last year, Jassy said that when you are healthy you want to keep reinventing yourself. How can this motto be transferred to the modern corporate world? Amazon is a healthy growth company. If it wants to stay that way, being inventive is not a question of will: it is a compulsion.