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US-IT-AMAZON-BEZOS-DIVORCE
Amazon’s Bezos finalizes divorce with $38 bn settlement: report
SAN FRANCISCO, July 6, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and
MacKenzie Bezos finalized their divorce Friday to the tune of a $38-billion
settlement, Bloomberg News reported.
Under the agreement, MacKenzie Bezos, 49, will receive approximately 19.7
million Amazon.com shares, giving her a four percent stake in the company
valued at $38.3 billion, and landing her at 22nd on the Bloomberg
Billionaires Index, the news service said.
A judge in Washington state’s King County finalized the divorce. Jeff
Bezos, 55, will retain a 12 percent stake and remain the world’s richest man.
MacKenzie Bezos, a novelist, has said she would give all of her stake in
The Washington Post and the space exploration firm Blue Origin to her husband
as well as voting control of her remaining Amazon stock.
She has also promised to donate half her fortune to charity, joining the
ranks of the world’s ultra-wealthy philanthropists as a signatory of the
Giving Pledge.
The personal life of Jeff Bezos was thrust into the spotlight with the
announcement in January that he and his wife were divorcing after 25 years of
marriage and the revelation by the National Enquirer that he had been having
an affair with a former news anchor, Lauren Sanchez.
Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos 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.
BSS/AFP/SSS/0945 hrs