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Amazon’s big handover: Bezos to Jassy to Selipsky

What to know about the three men at the centre of Amazon’s biggest handover
July 5, 2021
  • Amazon’s chief executive Jeff Bezos will step down from the role on 5th July 
  • Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon’s cloud computing business, will take the helm

On 5 July,  the anniversary of Amazon’s (US:AMZN) creation in 1994, Jeff Bezos steps down as chief executive after almost three decades at the helm. His leadership has seen the company grow from an online book shop to a tech behemoth that powers much of the digital world. But when the billionaire announced his plan to resign in late May, the stock barely reacted - even closing the day up slightly by 0.2 per cent. 

This may have been an early sign of confidence in his replacement, Andy Jassy, who has run Amazon’s cloud computing business (Amazon Web Services or ‘AWS’) since its inception in 2006. But while Amazon’s shares have risen to dizzying new heights over the past year, Jassy will not be inheriting an easy ride toward success: from antitrust challenges, to workers’ rights, to the lingering shadow of his predecessor. Here are the key things to know about the three men at the centre of Amazon’s first top-level handover.

 

Jassy: A new face for regulators 

Andy Jassy is regarded as a true ‘Amazonian’, having joined the company as a marketing manager in 1997, fresh out of an MBA at Harvard University. 

“I took my last final exam of graduate school the first Friday of May 1997,” Jassy said during a 2019 interview with Recode. “I started at Amazon the next Monday, I didn’t know what my job was going to be.” 

At the time, the company only had a few hundred staff and was about to go public at $1.50, adjusting for future stock splits. Now trading hands at $3,510 (£2,534), Amazon’s gargantuan $1.8trn market value has attracted the attention of competition regulators across the globe.  

From a regulatory perspective, Andy Jassy looks a more palatable figure head for the company. While Jeff Bezos’ readies for his extravagant post-CEO plans - namely, launching into space with his extra-terrestrial exploration company Blue Origin - Jassy’s interests in hockey and music appear (literally) more down to earth. 

Jassy’s stake in Amazon is worth around $285m, according to data from FactSet. On Friday the company revealed a stock award of a further 61,00 shares to vest over the next decade, which are currently worth around $214m. That still pales in comparison with Bezos’ estimated $200bn net wealth. 

Jassy may make for a friendlier face for regulators, but Amazon is not pulling any punches. The company has already filed a complaint against the appointment of Lina Khan as the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (‘FTC’), as reports suggest that the body is poised to launch an investigation into its $8.45bn deal to buy Hollywood film studio MGM. Khan is the author of the legal paper ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’ that shook the regulatory landscape in 2017 - and is evidence, Amazon claims, that she has already “made up her mind” that the company is anti-competitive. 

It will not be easy to argue that expertise is equivalent to bias in this case. But testifying in front of both the FTC and Congress will no doubt have been included in the job description - and Jassy’s reputation for a level-headed, detail-driven approach should help Amazon’s defence against lawmakers. 

 

Selipsky: A boomerang hire for Amazon’s money-maker 

Given Amazon’s rampant success, it is easy to forget a time when the company had fallen out of favour with the market. But just six years ago, analysts on Wall Street were questioning its slowing sales growth, continued losses and its seemingly random ventures into areas such as mobile phones. It was not until Amazon disclosed its rapid growth - and chunky margins - at AWS that analysts rushed to back the stock. 

It is arguably Amazon’s most important business, accounting for almost half of its operating profit. It came as a surprise then that the company looked outside the division to replace Jassy with Adam Selipsky, who will be leaving his position as chief executive at Tableau Software, a subsidiary of Salesforce (US:CRM). 

In fairness, Selipsky is not a true outside hire. Prior to joining Tableau in 2016, he worked at AWS for more than a decade as vice president of marketing, sales and support.  

“Adam brings strong judgment, customer obsession, team building, demand generation, and CEO experience to an already very strong AWS leadership team,” Jassy said in an email to AWS employees. “And, having been in such a senior role at AWS for 11 years, he knows our culture and business well.” 

 

Bezos: A leader from the shadows  

For now, we imagine that Bezos is preoccupied with his plans to launch into space in two weeks - or perhaps by Richard Branson beating him to the punch by nine days with his own space exploration company Virgin Galactic (US:SPCE). 

But while Bezos has given up the chief executive job at Amazon, it does not look like he will be stepping away from his business completely. He is taking up an ‘executive chairman’ position, where he is expected to wield a great deal of influence. 

In his last shareholder letter in April, Bezos said that he hoped to improve Amazon’s reputation as an employer, weeks after the company dodged unionisation efforts at a warehouse in Alabama. Pandemic-related hiring meant that in October last year, Amazon’s staff surpassed 1m for the first time, making it the US’ largest employer behind Walmart (US:WMT).

“It’s clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees – a vision for their success,” he wrote. In fact, just ahead of his departure last week, Bezos added two so-called ‘leadership principles’ to the company dogma: "strive to be Earth's best employer" and "success and scale bring broad responsibility". 

He appears intent on taking an active role in employee welfare, especially as Amazon’s treatment of its warehouse workers attracts greater scrutiny from labour activists and regulators alike.