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Jeff Bezos sells $1.8bn of Amazon stock
- phillipburch 7y agoDivorce is hard.
- eatbitseveryday 7y agoAs is writing constructive comments?
- sarosh 7y agoThe stock sale is apparently to fund Blue Origin.
- sp332 7y agoI can't read this article, but looking at other news sources, this is the usual yearly sell-off he does to fund his rocket ship company.
- amrrs 7y agoDo you think it's real/truth of what he says about building Blue Origin? i.e., like Mark got to build FB from his Dorm room because heavy lifting of Internet and Infra are setup, some kid in the future can launch space program because Blue origin is doing the heavy lifting of putting the foundation. I mean that seems like a great philanthropic vision, but Jeff Bezos known for serious business would do that with so much money without any foreseeing revenue - just for an improved society?
- SuoDuanDao 7y agoBill Gates did something very similar, and we were similarly skeptical then. I like to think that once you're the world's richest man, your priorities might shift in a way that's difficult to imagine from the midst of the rat race.
- pmoriarty 7y agoI've grown a lot more skeptical of what Gates has been doing with his foundation after investigative journalists started reporting on it.
- mffnbs 7y agoWhat reports are you referring to?
- erikpukinskis 7y agoHere’s one: https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/unholy-alliance/olob-bmgf-factsheet.pdf https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/...
- mffnbs 7y agoThis publication seems to be relying on the reader to have a preconceived negative bias on GMOs in order to establish some of their arguments. I understand why a casual reader who's been led to believe that GMOs are malicious or toxic would find this disturbing, but knowing that GMOs are basically how we are able to consume most if not all modern food safely, it's immediately sensationalist to me. I don't know about the other two topics they address, but I kind of question the motive altogether.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoNothing wrong with choosing GMO seeds. Definitely something wrong with trying to force farmers to use them.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoYes, Gates has done many good things, but the foundation makes a lot of calls, many of them bad. I don’t know why there’s an attitude of “Its philanthropic! It’s good!” Some of it is not. He’s older and kinder than he was before, but he still has many of the imperialist values that let him turn Microsoft into an empire.
- wslh 7y ago> I mean that seems like a great philanthropic vision, but Jeff Bezos known for serious business would do that with so much money without any foreseeing revenue - just for an improved society? It can be both. Companies like Google improve the society with their search engine and also have profits.
- barbecue_sauce 7y agoIt could also be that space is Bezos' actual, genuine passion, and everything else was just a way to get there.
- Latty 7y agoHe has said before "The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it." Now, in-context (https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-interview-axel-springer-ceo-amazon-trump-blue-origin-family-regulation-washington-post-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-interview-axel-sp...), he is saying that with an implicit "usefully", and I don't want to pretend he was saying what I am about to say, but it does sum it up very well. He has so much money he doesn't even know how he can spend it, it is simply the last option left of a thing to buy that no one else can. It is a vanity project. If he really wanted to cause positive change in the world, he could start by making Amazon less anti-consumer and anti-worker. It is well documented how bad Amazon is in those aspects, and the fact he has such insane wealth proves it doesn't have to be. I love space, and I love seeing advancement in the area—I truly do. However, there comes a point at which you must ask if the investment is justified when compared to what else could be done with that money. I think Bill Gates focuses a lot more on actually helping improve the world (again, not that it justifies the cost of the way that wealth was obtained). The real answer is that it should not be possible to amass such insane wealth—as it simply means too much power in the hands of a few people. It is nice that there has been a spate of the ultra-wealthy trying to do philanthropic things, but it doesn't mean the system is working.
- michaelt 7y agoPeople spend their disposable income on things without an expectation of revenue in return all the time. I don't profit from having nice coffee or sports tickets or netflix or a dog, but what's the point of having money you never spend? When you're a multibillionaire you can do the same thing - just now instead of sports tickets, you can afford entire sports teams.
- suprfsat 7y agoJeff Bezos sells $1.8bn of Amazon stock Move marks chief executive’s first sale of shares since his divorce in April August 1, 2019 2:20 pm by Tim Bradshaw in London and Shannon Bond in San Francisco Jeff Bezos has sold $1.8bn worth of Amazon shares over the past few days, in the ecommerce chief’s first stock sale since his divorce. Mr Bezos, who is the world’s richest person according to Forbes, has lately cashed in about $1bn worth of Amazon stock a year to fund his rocket venture, Blue Origin. In October last year, he said he planned to spend “a little more” than that in 2019. Blue Origin, which was founded in 2000 and is funded entirely by Mr Bezos, is targeting its first manned space flight on New Shepard, its reusable rocket, later this year. In May Mr Bezos unveiled a new lunar lander, which he said was the first step towards colonising the moon. “It’s time to go back to the moon — this time to stay,” he said. No specific reason for this week’s sale was given in a series of regulatory filings published late on Wednesday. Amazon declined to comment beyond the filings. In April, Mr Bezos agreed a divorce settlement with his former wife MacKenzie that saw him retain three quarters of his stake in Amazon. Ms Bezos said she would hand over all her interests in Blue Origin and the Washington Post newspaper to her former husband as part of the settlement, as well as her Amazon voting rights. Following this week’s sales, Mr Bezos’ remaining Amazon stock holdings are worth around $109bn, at Thursday’s opening price of around $1,878. The company’s shares have fallen since it reported a spike in expenses last week, due to its investment in one-day shipping. Although Amazon’s net income in the three months to June rose by 3.6 per cent to $2.6bn, earnings of $5.22 a share fell short of Wall Street’s estimate of $5.58, while its profit guidance for the current quarter also missed analysts’ projections. Copyright The Financial Times Limited . All rights reserved. Please don't copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
- a-priori 7y agoSo what? He sells $1B every year to fund Blue Origin alone. Maybe this is one of these transactions? On the scale of Bezos' fortune, this is not a significant amount of money.
- 27182818284 7y agoI hope that it is, because before reaching this comment thread I even thought "I hope it is to fund Blue Origin" We wasted 50 years not going after space like we should have been. Let's get at it.
- megous 7y agoNot sure what you're talking about. There were all kinds of probes sent to other planets/moons and experiments run in the last 50 years in space.
- mieseratte 7y agoResearch equipment is great and all, I'm not one of those "Why are we wasting money on toys" folks, but there is a real difference between sending a fancy RC car to Mars and enabling us meatbags to get there, with companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX more focused on the latter.
- davnicwil 7y agoIsn't part of the reasoning for doing the former enabling the latter? Isn't it completely essential to do this research before having any chance of sending people to Mars? I don't know the answer by the way, perhaps it was 'pure science' without any pretence of knowledge transferring over, but seems extremely unlikely that's the case - a certain amount of transferable knowledge is guaranteed just in the mechanics of doing it.
- alpha_squared 7y agoUnsure of it's intended or not, but the comment comes off really dismissive of what's been accomplished in the meantime. Studying Mars with "fancy RC car[s]" is vital for both visiting it and long-term study of the planet without unnecessarily risking lives. Our current technology also raises questions about mental health during such long trips. The comment also glosses over the ~70 currently active missions on NASA's plate[0]. NASA also had some major success with good media coverage for other missions to Saturn[1], Jupiter[2][3], and Pluto/Kuiper Belt[4]. Please don't belittle the amazing work that has been accomplished by all the people involved over the decades just because it's not part of pop culture. They've accomplished those things despite having to walk the political tightrope and nearly anemic funding. [0] https://science.nasa.gov/missions-page?field_division_tid=All&field_phase_tid=29 https://science.nasa.gov/missions-page?field_division_tid=Al... [1] https://science.nasa.gov/missions/cassini https://science.nasa.gov/missions/cassini [2] https://science.nasa.gov/missions/galileo https://science.nasa.gov/missions/galileo [3] https://science.nasa.gov/missions/juno https://science.nasa.gov/missions/juno [4] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.ht...
- nixgeek 7y agoHasn’t he been selling good amounts of stock annually for a while now? I thought he’d decided to put $1bn a year into Blue Origin? Protected by a paywall but why’s this news? Isn’t it also a fairly small % of his overall holding in Amazon?
- rando444 7y agoSimilar non-paywalled article: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/jeff-bezos-sells-1-8bn-of-amazon-stock-1.3974276 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/jeff-bezos-se... He's using the money to fund Blue Origin (aerospace manufacturing)
- buboard 7y agoVacation went over budget
- strikelaserclaw 7y agonot if u want to take a vacation to mars
- mruts 7y agoWhy does he selp stock to fund Blue Origin instead of taking out debt backed by shares? If the past is any indication, such debt would make way more financial sense than selling shares. I don’t know how long he’s been doing this, but he’s leaving billions of dollars of returns on the table. And don’t anyone say he doesn’t want the exposure, because he clearly does.
- amerine 7y agoMaybe he doesn’t give a shit? For example, if I make 250k/year and you offer me another 20k a year, but I have to add >10% additional work to my plate... nah.
- eloisant 7y agoHe likely has people working full time to take care of his fortune, so it's not like he would have to micro-manage those solutions.
- mpeg 7y agoBezos would have an army of finance folks doing this, it's zero work for him.
- winrid 7y agoSounds like a promotion to management :p
- mruts 7y agoI dunno, I make over 250k/year in base comp, and if you offered me an extra 20k, I would work an additional 10%. Regardless, Jeff Bezos is most certainly not managing his finances himself, he probably has an army of peons advising him on everything.
- rolltiide 7y agoHe probably doesn't pay m/any taxes on that Unlike income, the raw tax footprint would be at long term capital gains tax rate of 20% + 3.8% and Washington State has no tax on this kind of transactions. He can get a further 50% deduction on that moving half the money to a foundation he owns and controls completely. If he had any carryover foundation donations in the past then it applies here too. Any prior substantial long term capital losses offset this as well and his other non-amazon projects likely pass through Net Operating Losses directly to him (if structured as a partnership) He probably pays 8% tax on this if that, doesn't have to worry about margin calls, its totally free and clear.
- altmind 7y agoIs selling personal stock to fund your other company tax effective? He's paying capital gains tax when moving money from one pocket to another.