SEATTLE: Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, are divorcing, ending a 25-year marriage that played a role in the creation of an e-commerce company that made Bezos one of the world’s wealthiest people.
The decision to divorce comes after a trial separation, according to a statement posted Wednesday on Jeff Bezos’ Twitter account. He and his wife both signed the announcement, which ended with a vow to remain “cherished friends.”
Left unanswered was one of the biggest sticking points in any divorce: How the assets amassed during the marriage will be divided.
And there may never have been more money than in this case.
Jeff Bezos is ranked at the top of most lists of the world’s wealthiest people, and his fortune currently hovers around $137 billion, according to estimates by both Forbes and Bloomberg. Virtually all of that is tied up in the nearly 79 million shares of Amazon stock (currently worth about $130 billion) that Bezos owns in the Seattle company, translating into a 16 percent stake. Bezos, 54, also owns rocket ship maker Blue Origin and The Washington Post, which he bought for $250 million in 2013.
Because the pair were married before Amazon was founded, it’s likely that MacKenzie Bezos holds a large claim to that fortune, though details hinge on where the couple files for divorce and if they had a prenuptial agreement.
King County, where their home is located, confirmed on Twitter Wednesday that the Bezoses had not filed for divorce in court. The couple own a home in a wealthy Seattle suburb within the county. The Bezoses have four children.
“The property acquired during the marriage is common property,” said Jennifer Payseno, a family lawyer at the firm McKinley Irvin in Seattle. That includes stock ownership, although Amazon has not filed any regulatory documents to suggest Bezos’ stake in the company has changed.
All that power and wealth has magnified the focus on Jeff Bezos, although his divorce seems unlikely to enthrall the public like high-profile breakups among movie stars such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Or even those of other billionaires, such as Donald Trump’s tabloid-fodder split with his former wife Ivana in the early 1990s, long before he was elected president.
But the Bezos divorce seems likely to attract more attention than when Google co-founder Sergey Brin — currently worth $49 billion — divorced his former wife Anne in 2015.
The amicable tenor of the Bezoses’ divorce announcement makes it highly likely that the couple already has reached an agreement on how to divide their assets, Payseno said.
Amazon’s origins trace back to a road trip that the Bezoses took together not long after they met in New York while working at hedge fund D.E. Shaw. They got married just six months after they began dating, according to Bezos.
Not long after that, Jeff Bezos quit his job at Shaw and started an online bookstore. While his wife did the cross-country driving, Bezos wrote a business plan on the way to Seattle — chosen for its abundance of tech talent. By July 1995, Amazon was operating out of a garage, with MacKenzie Bezos lending a hand, according to a review she posted on Amazon in 2013 panning “The Everything Store,” a book about Bezos and the company written by Brad Stone.
“I was there when he wrote the business plan, and I worked with him and many others represented in the converted garage, the basement warehouse closet, the barbecue-scented offices, the Christmas-rush distribution centers, and the door-desk filled conference rooms in the early years of Amazon’s history,” she recalled.
Amazon has since evolved from an upstart website selling books to an e-commerce goliath that sells virtually all imaginable merchandise and runs data centers that power many other digital services such as Netflix. It also has become a leader in intelligent voice-activated speakers with its Echo products, which are emerging as command centers for Internet-connected homes — and a gateway to buying more stuff from Amazon.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and wife divorcing after 25 years
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and wife divorcing after 25 years
- Jeff Bezos is ranked at the top of most lists of the world's wealthiest people, and his fortune currently hovers around $137 billion
Not Italy’s Devil’s Island: Sardinia bristles at mafia inmate plan
- A third of top-risk mafia prisoners could go to Sardinia
- Officials say clans may follow relatives and infiltrate economy
NUORO: In Nuoro, a remote city on the Italian island of Sardinia, a high stone wall rings the local prison, a fortress-like complex once renowned for holding high-profile mobsters and convicted terrorists far from the mainland.
Only a handful of top mafiosi remain detained there and Sardinia is no longer seen as a dumping ground for criminals, instead building an international reputation around tourism.
But that could change under a plan of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government which has alarmed residents. In December, a justice undersecretary said about 750 prisoners held under the rigid “41bis” regime would be concentrated in just a few dedicated facilities across Italy, overseen by special guard units to improve security.
Sardinia has been told it may get nearly a third of them, split between Sassari in the north, already housing about 90, the capital Cagliari, where around 90 are due to arrive this month, and Nuoro — reviving old stigma concerns.
“Sardinia does not deserve to be seen as Italy’s Cayenne,” said Governor Alessandra Todde, invoking the notorious former French Guiana penal colony on Devil’s Island.
Worries of Mafia infiltration
Italy’s 41bis regime, named after the law that regulates it, is among the most restrictive in Europe. Introduced in 1992 after the murder of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, it imposes near-total isolation on prisoners and was designed to stop bosses running their operations from behind bars.
The law says it should “preferably” be enforced on Italy’s islands. The late boss of the Sicilian mafia, Salvatore “Toto” Riina, was among those once held in Sardinia.
Locals and authorities fear the government plan could prompt mafia clans to move from mainland Italy to be near jailed relatives, creating opportunities to launder illicit money and infiltrate business, particularly in less developed areas, such as Nuoro, a city of 30,000 people.
Silvio Lai, a Sardinian lawmaker with the opposition Democratic Party, visited the city prison last month and said renovation work was already ongoing, potentially making room for at least 30 new maximum-security inmates.
“Weak economies can be infiltrated easily, and Nuoro is about an hour’s drive from the Costa Smeralda,” Lai said, suggesting a mafia foothold in the city could swiftly spread to the island’s luxurious tourist resort.
The Justice Ministry did not respond to a request to comment on the work.
Improving national security
Autonomous mafia groups have never emerged in sparsely populated Sardinia, but magistrates say investigations have been opened into alleged clan penetration in the north of the island, possibly encouraged by the presence of detained mobsters.
“Prosecutors are keeping a close watch on the phenomenon of Camorra (a mafia group based around Naples) investments... especially in the tourism, hospitality and restaurant sectors,” said Cagliari chief prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio.
At a December meeting with regional officials, Justice Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove downplayed the risk of a mass move to Sardinia, minutes show, arguing that families of 41bis detainees do not typically leave clan-controlled areas.
“This (plan) will ensure greater national security... will make individual prisons safer because only specialized prison guard units will be deployed,” Delmastro said.
However, Maria Cristina Ornano, head of the sentence enforcement tribunal in Cagliari, said police and the judiciary will need increased security resources if more mobsters arrive.
“Once organized crime takes root here, we will not be able to get rid of it. We can see it in parts of southern Italy, which are among the most
