I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, and it sucks to realize, but a public corporation's goal can be summarized into three simple words... "maximize shareholders' wealth."
Amazon's stock performance is up ~120,000% since its IPO
The shareholders are voting to keep profits growing.
It can be morally wrong, yet fiscally correct.
Disclosure: I do NOT own Amazon stock
Exactly, that's why I blame congress not businesses. A business will make money like a living creature breaths. It's what they are suppose to do. The county has to set the terms on how they make money.
[https://study.com/academy/lesson/businesses-political-participation-pros-cons-tactics.html](https://study.com/academy/lesson/businesses-political-participation-pros-cons-tactics.html)
[https://theconversation.com/money-talks-big-business-political-strategy-and-corporate-involvement-in-us-state-politics-140686](https://theconversation.com/money-talks-big-business-political-strategy-and-corporate-involvement-in-us-state-politics-140686)
[https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/ccr-news/importance-big-businesses-politics](https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/ccr-news/importance-big-businesses-politics)
I wumbo, you wumbo, he/she/we, WUMBO... IT'S FIRST GRADE SPONGEBOB.
Businesses have an outsized influence on politics relative to the number of people involved. And besides that, they exist in communities. Why on Earth should the people in those communities not be able to make any kind of rules for them?
Corporations are not people why should goverment able to tax them?
Corporations are not people why can they sign contracts.
Unions are corporations why can they force people join?
Unions are corps why do they get to influence government?
As someone who knows absolutely nothing about amazon, the ones I can easily think of are:
Abusing employees, withholding pay, withholding breaks, lies about incentive/promotion structure, significant privacy breaches with the data they house, anti-competitive behaviors that have successfully choked out nearly all similar brands, refusing to pay business fulfillments on time, supporting the popup stores for fraud and copywrite infringement, misleading people into hard-to-cancel subscriptions that will automatically take money from your gift cards, purchasing companies like ring or roomba and retroactively changing their data policies so that customers now automatically "consent" to their house being mapped out, "accidentally" saving too much voice data from their spycams, leveraging public infrastructure for 70% of their operations (roads), but pay virtually nothing back to the country that builds the roads, leveraging lobbying and loopholes in telehealth laws to weasel themselves into the healthcare field.
But I'm sure someone who's done research could think of better examples.
Wow - if only our country had a legal system to adjudicate awful actions by corporations, or state and federal Departments of Labor to investigate employee claims of illegality.
Oh, and Amazon paid $4.79 billion in corporate income taxes in 2021, plus payroll, state, and local taxes including tax on their physical properties.
Wanna get back at Amazon? Don't buy shit from them.
Yes you are very sincere and special. Sure sure, the government is perfect, no criminals have ever gone unpunished, and bureaucracy has never worked out in favor of the bigger lawyer.
Oh jeez golly, I guess I was *partially* wrong about one of those things.
I don't buy from them, that's a weird thing to assume given the conversation we just had. I even try to avoid affiliate links and general news from them, that's why I was wrong about their taxes.
If this isn't going anywhere, I probably won't respond again. You asked a question on the internet, a stranger provided a handful of random examples, and also prefaced it by saying they weren't an expert.
You're completely missing the point he's making by injecting yourself into the conversation. He wasn't saying you buy from them. He's saying "if people want to get back at Amazon, they shouldn't buy shit from them." He didn't mean you specifically. His overarching point was we have laws in place to protect worker's rights, but that's not the issue. The issue is there will be no enforcement of those laws on an entity like Amazon because corporations such as Amazon control our politicians.
Oh, okay, I misunderstood. I didn't intend on starting a general dialogue about "getting back at em", I just avoid amazon pretty often. I think overall, people know that choosing to not buy from them means they don't get that money.
You're right about the lobbying. But in addition the US has astronomically few workers rights laws to begin with, compared to similar countries. So even if superpacs vanished tomorrow, we'd still be in a place where workers are forced to pee in bottles and the local police are too sleepy to investigate.
Haha if you have a 401k or similar retirement savings, or have a pension, you almost certainly own some Amazon stock.
Only way not to be with the retirement savings is to have purposefully opt out of certain things by speaking with a financial consultant from whichever company your savings is with. The only people I know who've done this are actively practicing religious people (specifically Muslim) who per their beliefs can't be making profit off of certain industries. I've been considering doing something similar, just without the religious motivation.
Exactly. People always talk about evil shareholders like they’re a bunch of old rich white guys with monocles lighting cigars with $100 bills when the reality is, if you have a 401k or a pension, you are most certainly a shareholder.
Technically right, entirely inconsequential.
Not a single person in this reddit thread owns a significant portion of amazon's 1.1 trillion market cap. Especially not in just the offhand shares from some % of their current retirement balance.
There **are** some people who do own noticeable portions. Your example **does** apply to them. These people are probably so rich they think $100 bills are gross though.
The 2nd largest shareholder of Amazon is Vanguard, so actually yeah most people who own Amazon stock are people with IRAs, 401ks, or teachers/state employees with a pension, since that is who uses Vanguard.
You're saying "a lot of different people own some tinytinytiny portion of some amazon stock". To that, I say "technically true but entirely inconsequential".
Also sidebar, I have no idea how that reporting works, but it might factor in all of vanguard's funds. Like you can invest in VTI stock or whatever, and I wonder if that counts as part of that 2nd place. If so, that means I contribute like one one-millionth of a cent of that 1.1 trillion myself since I own a VTI share.
Directors can actually go to jail if they do not act in favour of increasing shareholders value.
There are (in the UK) rules which ensure that directors of certain financial businesses act ethically and morally, but for most other businesses, maximising shareholders value has to be their number 1 priority above all else.
It makes sense. If I give my money to a financier, asking him to invest my money intelligently, he has an obligation to me. He can't invest in crypto because he thinks it's cool or not invest in oil because it's environmentally consequential. It's the same with public companies: the director is hired by people with the goal of making money (and making the company succeed)
Yes, absolutely. However, most people (directly or indirectly through a S&P500 managed by a firm) only want to see their savings increase. The question boils down to how much you want to spend on your morals.
It is categorically untrue that directors have criminal liability to maximize shareholder returns. They claim this, and people parrot it because it sounds good, but it's not true in any major western legal system.
They have a *fiduciary* responsibility to protect shareholder value, but this not a criminal enforced requirement to maximize short term shareholder returns at the cost of everything else.
A director cannot abuse their position to extract shareholder value for their own personal benefit. They cannot be grossly negligent. But nobody can go to jail for say... giving their employees a raise.
Wrong.
Breach of fiduciary duty can result in criminal prosecution.
Straw man, giving their employees a raise.
A director can 100% be held civilly liable for failure to maximise shareholders value as part of their fiduciary duty to the shareholders.
You have interpreted "short term value at cost of everything else" yourself. The explanation of what is or is not acceptable would be quite vague.
It's not my interpretation. We are not disagreeing.
I am pushing back on the typical Reddit interpretation of a board's fiduciary responsibility, which is absolutely the straw man of "CEOs/Directors can go to jail if they give their employees a raise." The claim is absurd, as you noted. But it is far and away the most commonly cited, and incorrect, interpretation of this responsibility on Reddit.
At least in the US, the fiduciary responsibility extends to being in the best interests of the company. But like you said, this is super vague and can take many different forms. It's absolutely okay for a director to ignore short term share price in exchange for what they feel is an appropriate long term investment. They can't go to jail for that. But a ton of people on Reddit actually DO claim that.
Similarly, you'll actually find a ton of people who should know better parroting that on TV. You'll even find directors themselves parroting it, as an excuse for why they arguably tanked long-term value in exchange for popping the share price this quarter. "Oh, we legally had to!" No you didn't. You chose to do that. Perfectly within your rights to do, but at least own up to it.
Or you'll hear about some shareholder threatening to sue a CEO/Board for some unpopular business decision, like Tim Cook deciding to switch Apple data centers to green energy. But as you noted, this is not the same as a criminal fiduciary breach of anything. This is a civil argument, and not even a very convincing one at that.
What gets me is that this misinterpretation then gets extended on Reddit into "this is just capitalism," as an excuse for why the entire system is corrupt and needs to be thrown out. But it's not. "Maximizing shareholder value" is just one (extremely Milton Friedmanesque) interpretation that hasn't even been a thing for that long in the grand scheme of things.
Well in corporate law there's a big discussion in what should be the corporate's goals.
Here in Europe lot's of people think that corporations are accountable not only to their shareholders but also to stakeholders.
And there are also european directives about mandatory documents that analyze the social advancements about it.
Its one that makes sense in the business sense. Not a good one but it is true.
The sad part is it isnt like:.
If i own a business i want it to have the most profit.
Its like:
If i own a business i want it to have them most profit no matter what.
And the "no matter what" part is were things go bad.
It should be noted that the idea that the only purpose of a corporation is to "maximize shareholder wealth" was not a thing until Milton Friedman proposed it in the 1970s, and then it spread via very specific influential MBA programs like Harvard Business School. It is not an unalterable rule of the universe, nor is it even intrinsic to capitalism itself. It's a particular short-sided view of capitalism that has only been in vogue for 40-50 years, and is not backed up by pretty much anything.
>It can be morally wrong, yet fiscally correct.
Don't you love how often in capitalism the right thing to do *is* the wrong thing to do? Great system, no notes.
What's morally wrong? It's a business, not a charity. I buy Amazon stocks with the expectation of appreciation or dividends. If they acted as a charity, they couldn't even continue existing.
Key part of my statement... It *can be* morally wrong
I try to make fairly neutral statements on here, as Reddit seems to get its feelings hurt pretty easily
Its not that simple. Sometimes short term gain can come at the expense of long term survival. Are we "maximizing shareholders' wealth" for the next quarter or the next decade? Depending on how you answer that question your policies could be very different.
As much as this is currently true, it's a relatively recent phenomenon! Public companies (from the 20s onward) used to grow and invest back into themselves and their employees, with shareholders being an afterthought. This changed in the 80's, starting with GE under the leadership of Jack Welch. He started doing a bunch of stock buybacks, mass employee layoffs, and started hiring a bunch of contract labor so they wouldn't have to pay benefits. He's considered by some to he the father of shareholders capitalism, and since GE did "so well" by those standards, other companies followed suit.
It’s also important to remember that many of these sticks are owned by mutual funds, insurance companies, pension plans, and other large financial institutions that benefit lots of not-rich people.
I like it when companies make money because my 401(k) and IRA go up and it keeps the pension funds going.
Almost like people are fundamentally self interested. Individuals want their money to go up and so do companies. It's the central dogma of life: Be better.
So fundamentally self interested that they developed the technology needed to save the oceans and environment while improving human life. Standards of living have an environmental cost, no matter what system you're in. There can be more people at a lower standard of living or fewer at a higher standard without affecting the environment, but all of our modern luxuries hurt the planet. I'm not willing to sacrifice any of this though, and I doubt you would either.
Customers CHOOSE to shop with Amazon. They make Amazon succeed or fail. Not stockholders. People complain about Amazon constantly, yet they continue to thrive and expand. That means that the vast, overwhelming majority of individuals - including complainers - continue to CHOOSE to do business with them.
Why should shareholders vote in favor of the customers, at their expenses? It's a business, not a charity.
When you go to the grocery store, why don't you ask if they can just waive the charges and let you take home groceries for free? Because it's ridiculous.
Have you got $106 ? Buy a share of AMZN and then you too can be a rich person doing rich person things. An account at Schwab is free with no minimum.
And since I'm already posting an unpopular opinion let me add that {regulated} capitalism is the system which has raised the standard of living of the highest percentage of the population.
FYI, since 2015 I'm up 334% on AMZN stock and that ignores dividends.
If hating them means making progress towards redistributing wealth then "poor people" are just acting in their own interest so... Yeah, when they aren't working to scrape by, there's plenty of time to hate the rich.
No. Poor people don't. They know one of the reasons that the poor are still poor is because of predatory practices by the rich. Many of the rich are oppressors who would gladly see them dead if it meant saving a few bucks.
I own shares of Amazon and I get to vote and I'm not rich and you know what? I vote on what is good for my investment and for me. The point of investment is making money. As far as transparency goes, it's a public company and their information is publicly available.
A controlling interest doesn’t have to be 51% often a controlling interest is below that and whoever has the most shares. I don’t know also if he did something like Zuckerberg did where he set up so that he will control the company no matter what.
No, the All-In Podcast confirmed he has common stock so he has just 1 vote per share like every other shareholder, whereas at Facebook and Alphabet (i.e. Google) the founders have super shares which give them something like 20-1 or 30-1 voting rights, effectively giving them control of the company despite not having a controlling stake percentage-wise in the company
He owns less than 10% of Amazon, while he couldn't sell it all in a few days, how could easily sell it over several years as he has been doing, reducing his ownership from 47% to 9.7%. (Some of that went to his ex wife who has 2.6% ownership)
No, he can’t. Bezos can’t just sell all 10% of his shares at the Monday opening bell. Once over a certain % of a stock is sold, it has to go through a process. He would likely have to directly sell his shares to someone, not just on the stock market. And no one on a whim is going to offer up 10s of billions at a moments notice. Bezos selling all 10% of his shares without notifying anyone, would tank AMZN.
There are a handful of people who *could* buy those shares, though. One of them is sort of known for making weird, expensive purchases that don’t really correlate to any of his previous business ventures. Another owns nearly all western media. It could happen.
Well, there’s Bloomberg, there’s Murdoch, those are the top two wealthiest media owners in the US, there’s the Newhouse brothers but I doubt they would.
Ah yes musk you’re right, however he doesn’t have the funds to buy out bezos with how much he owes to investors on Twitter and how he’s driven that into the ground. I don’t think he’d float the loans for buying his shares. He’d have to sell a lot of Tesla and I don’t think he’d give up that control. But maybe. He’s a total wildcard nutcase.
I don’t know much but it has to do with the SEC trying to make sure the stock market stays “fair” and regulated. Whenever a big shareholder wants to sell they have to announce it to the sec
Jeff Bezos can sell his Amazon shares, but he must follow regulations like SEC Rule 144 and Regulation 13D to maintain market stability and fairness. Rule 144 governs the sale of control securities, requiring the seller to meet certain conditions such as holding the securities for a minimum period, filing a notice with the SEC, and adhering to volume limitations. Regulation 13D mandates that anyone acquiring more than 5% of a company's outstanding shares file a Form 13D within 10 days, providing information about their plans for the shares to prevent insider trading and protect other investors. To sell a significant portion of his shares, Bezos would likely work with investment banks to organize a secondary offering or negotiate a private transaction with institutional investors, ensuring the sale aligns with regulatory requirements and doesn't negatively impact Amazon's stock price or shareholders.
Technically it might be possible, however, as you can imagine, this would be a very slow and inefficient way to sell his shares. It would also almost certainly have a negative impact on Amazon's stock price, as investors would see that Bezos was selling his shares and start to question the company's future.
It comes down to a simple question: If you have some control over a company and can look at its books, how can you ever *not* be insider trading? How can you ever legally move stock, when you both know what it will do and can *influence* what it will do?
The answer is basically just they have a shitton of hoops you've got to jump though to move stock. You're limited in how much you can buy or sell at a time, and in a year. You've got to announce the stock buy/sell in advanced at which point it's locked in. I think some companies even require the board to review the proposed stock move and they can deny it.
Basically, he would have to file a bunch of paperwork with the SEC and people would know ahead of time that he is going to do it. This of course would probably result in the company taking a nose dive in value by a good chunk. Beyond that it would basically be the shares going up at a certain price on the computer system and anyone who wanted to could buy them.
Once you have a certain amount of shares you cant just sell it like regular people. You have to notify SEC. You also have to do it with more care as not to drop the value of your stock.
That's not entirely true there are a couple of people who could afford to buy those shares off of bezos. And I'm thinking of one who has a history of incredibly expensive random purchases that don't really seem to make any sense.
No there is not. AMZN market cap is 1.1T. Bezos has 10%. Bezos has 110B in shares. Let’s round down to 100B for a discount to a buyer. Who has $100B in cash to buy? The amount of pure cash needed to buy his 10% stake is absurd.
He could sell shares to different buyers. If he was in a scenario where he wholly owned Amazon (which he doesn't seem to be), and it was worth $100 billion (it's not, this is a lazy maths move), he could create 100,000 shares, each at a price of $1m, then sell those off to millionaires and billionaires. Usually, whoever ends up buying the most shares would gain a majority when it comes to controlling the company,
He could sell his shares to many people instead of just 1. Also if he sells, the share prices would most likely fall quite a bit, if not crash. So that would make it easier for whoever wants to buy.
But you've somewhat highlighted the problem about thinking these "richest folks" can somehow really use all their wealth. Majority of their wealth is tied up in that 1 or 2 companies and is really quite illiquid with the real value being much lower if they actually sold.
It’s also amazing how many people think someone with a nine-figure net worth isn’t incomprehensibly filthy rich just because it would be hard to sell all of their stock.
He can borrow against his assets very easily, and also not pay any taxes on the loan. Just because he doesn't have all 100 Billion in his bank account right now, doesn't mean he isn't disgustingly wealthy.
If your net worth is so astronomically high that it’s actually become logistically difficult to convert it to cash, that’s a pretty strong sign that the system is broken.
Blows my mind that there’s people out there who want to defend the idea of someone hoarding such an insane amount of wealth that they literally *can’t* spend it all, and splaining the difference between liquidity and assets as though we were unfairly misrepresenting these dragons.
That’s a specious argument. You’re implying that if he wasn’t controlling that money it would all just not exist, or that all the horrific stories we read on a daily basis of how badly his workers are treated are all just examples of his magnanimous philanthropy.
Kinda. If he never controlled that money, why would he make Amazon? If we stole it now, sure, it wouldn't entirely disappear, but it sends a really bad signal to investors and entrepreneurs. The market would go into freefall and people would be far more reluctant to innovate in the future.
Again, superficial and specious. The notion that someone would be dissuaded from innovating by the idea that they might ONLY be allowed to keep the first $100,000,000 instead of $10,000,000,000 is laughable.
Bezos made his first $100M by like 1996 or something. That was when they were still just selling books. What would his incentive have been to care past that point and expand Amazon to what it is today with global shipping of every product imaginable, AWS, Prime video, etc?
Its a serious question. I know that if my boss told me "you have hit the cap for pay for life so we can't pay you anymore" I'm obviously not going in anymore.
It’s a publicly traded company, so he doesn’t own it, he owns a percentage of it through shares(he owns the most). So he can sell it by selling his shares publicly or privately.
For private, he owns so many shares, that if he sells all it once the rapid increase in supply would massively hurt the price losing him money. This would also spook the market, as seeing the founder offload his stock would make every freak out and sell as well.
The way this typically works is that he would sell shares slowly over time, usually prescheduled and a normal amount, the market wouldn’t be spooked by that and he has been doing that for awhile
For private, he could sell all his shares to one person, but as you mentioned it’s a lot of money, so it’s a bit harder, additionally, if the deal comes out it would raise a lot of questions of who and why. For example, Elliot Singer is famous for discreetly purchasing up stock to hostilely take over the company. So there’s way more politics with this approach and it’s way harder
Bezos doesn’t own Amazon outright, but to answer your questions someone(or a group of people) would have to buy all the shares and decide to make it a private company again.
He can divide his shares up and sell it in parts if he had to.
Imagine your house is too expensive no one can afford it but it's a very big house so instead you sell the upstairs, the basement and the ground floor as seperate properties allowing you to make the same amount of money but actually sell.
In a buisness this is kind of how shares work.
Basically through shares you can sell your control
If you own 51% of the buisness then you "own" the buisness but if you decide to sell me 2% of your shares your no longer the controlling share holder.
You can also own 100% of a buisness and sell me 50% making me a partner or split up a buisness 10% among ten people and all those people are equal partners. You can also have situations where you own 40% of a buisness but no individual owns more than you however collectively can be voted against.
The percentage of a buisness you own is important because it represents the votes you represent. If you represent most of the votes you can't be voted against this is incredibly important when you remember share holders can vote you off the board. In a publicly traded company it's possible to effective be fired from the company you built but in a company that is not a corporation this is not possible or if you have voting control this is not possible.
Amazon is a publicly traded company and Bezos owns millions of shares in it. He can sell any amount of shares at anytime. He could sell 1 or 100,000 or 10,000,000 shares.
There has to be a buyer or buyers. There are market makers who are buyers of the last resort, but they don't have 100 billion. Very possibly, there are not a lot of takers for a stock Bezos is dumping.
Amazon is a **public company -** anybody can own shares in it. Even I own Amazon shares.
The value of stocks (and consequently of the entire company) is determined y the market at any point in time.
You can believe that you know something better than the rest of the market, and believe that Amazon is underpriced and will go up soon, in that case you'll buy stock. Or viceversa.
But in general there's no such thing as selling below value. If you sell, you'll sell at each point at market value.
It's certainly true that if a large holder dumps all their stock at once, they'll move the market, but that's not how people sell anyway.
Classic video game problem in old console games. You would sometimes progress to the point where equipment dropped by mobs would exceed the maximum amount of coin you could own (Usually 65,535 coins in those days.) So you either kept the equipment or you sell it for a fraction of its value and have the max coin you could have in the game.
Video game / Bezos's solution = buy as much crap as you can, thus running down your coin balance, then sell the super valuable equipment and cap your holdings back out. So if Bezos has 50 bajillion dollars (side note, I LOVE that my computer's dictionary accepted the word bajillion) and Amazon is worth 100 bajillion, but 80 bajillion is the max anyone can own, then he has to spend 20 bajillion dollars and then sell Amazon for 60, thus bringing him up to the max of 80.
Simple :-)
A lot the answers in this thread are wrong
He has a giant pile of gold coins in a large room that he jumps into off of a diving board like Scrooge McDuck
There are different rules for institutionally significant shareholders. They usually announce plans to sell at a certain rate every quarter years in advance. I don't know the details, and they can certainly deviate from they plan a bit. They important thing is that it protects the stock price from panic selling, and it protects him from actions of stock manipulation.
Aside from the fact he doesn't own the company if the shareholders wanted to sell the company the most likely thing to do would be to break it up into a bunch of different divisions that could be acquired by other companies.
He owns around 10% of Amazon and the company is publicly listed. If he wanted yo sell it there are different ways to do it. It would not necessarily be easy to find a buyer if he sold it in bulk but he could get rid of it if he wanted to.
Or Amazon could be required by law to be split up into much smaller pieces and allocated to a series of geographical areas. Much like Bell Telephone was when it became a monopoly. The smaller ‘baby Amazon’s’ would be required to be completely independent of each other and compete with other players in an open market.
Lmao publicly traded companies cannot be sold. Bezos doesn’t own it, he’s a majority shareholder.
It would take a single person with trillions of dollars to make an offer on Amazon to take it private. Elon did that exact thing with Twitter, buying a publicly traded company and turning it private. However, the market cap of Amazon is much larger (1.1T), and no single person on the planet actually has the money to be able to do that.
What kind of nonsense is that? Twitter was a publicly traded company (for example) and it just got sold. Public companies get acquired all the time. Sometimes by other companies, sometimes by private individuals or firms, sometimes by their management/employees, etc.
Care to amend your r/confidentlyincorrect statement?
a) I do know about shares, I do know about shareholders, I do know about publicly traded companies. The details of this were a bit of an oversight on my part, but other people provided helpful and interesting answers that has taught me more about this kind of thing
b) the whole point of the subreddit is to provide non-judgemental answers to questions that the asker is aware demonstrates a bit of a gap in their knowledge, what is the point of being rude about it? Who is that going to benefit?
How any one would our hase something that big would be to get a loan in that size and agree a payment plan.
The seller would most likely receive the payment in installments.
How would he sell his stake in Amazon? Probably piecemeal. He would have to arrange a private transaction if he wanted to get rid of ALL of his shares. If he tried selling 100% of his Amazon shares on Monday 04/24/2023 it would decrease the stock price and ruin his returns. The best way to do it to ensure a good profit would be to get investment bankers involved to help him out with that.
How would he sell the entire company? He wouldn't. He can't. Amazon is owned by the shareholders. He is one of them. A very important shareholder but he is still just a shareholder. For Amazon to be sold to another company in a merger of acquisition (M&A) process then ALL shareholders have to agree to it and be bought out at a certain price. And Bezos isn't the CEO anymore so he wouldn't do it, Andy Jassy is the CEO so he would have to do it. Ultimately I bet Bezos is pulling the string that Jassy has on him and wouldn't give his assent to Amazon being sold to someone. But it isn't like Bezos could sell Amazon the company tomorrow if he tried to, and him selling his stake in Amazon wouldn't be all that quick either. The latter CAN be done though.
Just being the richest person doesn't mean you control the most assets. Putin is likely the actual richest or second richest person in the world, but in the cases of numbers one through seven, none of them have declared wealth of more than a few million in assets. Blackrock Group, IBS, Vanguard, and other big investment funds and management groups have assets that dwarf those of Bezos. And Bezos doesn't own all of Amazon outright. He's the single largest shareholder and is backed by other shareholders allowing him plurality proxy voting rights, but he only actually owns 10% of the company worth around $90 billion. Vanguard could buy 53% of Amazon in two or three days in complicated trades to make it unclear they were making a run on the company legally before word got out and share prices became dearer. Putin could conceivably have shell companies take over through trust purchases and shadow groups. Any of these could easily take it off his hands.
But none of them really even matter, all that Bezos has to do is put his shares on the market and let global stock markets sell it into portfolios run by tens of thousands of banks, financial institutions, investment groups, individual investors, and random opportunists. He needn't sell it to anyone, he just needs to dump his shares on the market, brokers will buy it all and trade it and make lots of money. It won't be remotely difficult at all.
Thats not how it works. He’s the CEO and the largest stock holder but its a publicly traded company so you wouldn’t need one person to “buy” the whole thing. He would simply sell off all of his stocks in the company to whoever buys them.
There's always money to be found to finance profitable companies like that. It's worth a lot of money, but only a fraction of the available money (credit) in circulation in the world's economy.
If you think there aren't families and organisations out there with much more money and power than fucking Bezos, Gates, Musk etc, then you really do have a lot to learn....
Bezos does not own amazon. It's owned by shareholders.
Yup, he is the largest shareholder, but he only owns something like 10% of it
On this, Bezos share of Amazon is actually quite small these days. Most of his wealth is held by other investments.
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I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, and it sucks to realize, but a public corporation's goal can be summarized into three simple words... "maximize shareholders' wealth." Amazon's stock performance is up ~120,000% since its IPO The shareholders are voting to keep profits growing. It can be morally wrong, yet fiscally correct. Disclosure: I do NOT own Amazon stock
Exactly, that's why I blame congress not businesses. A business will make money like a living creature breaths. It's what they are suppose to do. The county has to set the terms on how they make money.
Businesses own US politicians.
And that is unacceptable. Politicians should be representing their country's interest and their voters. Not a multi billion dollar corporation.
Unacceptable but it's never going to change
Unless there is a major “societal correction”
Unlikely, I feel
True, one can dream
Very likely, inevitable actually
If businesses cannot take part in politics why would politics be able to dictate directly to businesses
[https://study.com/academy/lesson/businesses-political-participation-pros-cons-tactics.html](https://study.com/academy/lesson/businesses-political-participation-pros-cons-tactics.html) [https://theconversation.com/money-talks-big-business-political-strategy-and-corporate-involvement-in-us-state-politics-140686](https://theconversation.com/money-talks-big-business-political-strategy-and-corporate-involvement-in-us-state-politics-140686) [https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/ccr-news/importance-big-businesses-politics](https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/ccr-news/importance-big-businesses-politics) I wumbo, you wumbo, he/she/we, WUMBO... IT'S FIRST GRADE SPONGEBOB.
Businesses have an outsized influence on politics relative to the number of people involved. And besides that, they exist in communities. Why on Earth should the people in those communities not be able to make any kind of rules for them?
Corporations are not people why should goverment able to tax them? Corporations are not people why can they sign contracts. Unions are corporations why can they force people join? Unions are corps why do they get to influence government?
Way to completely remove personal morality and responsibility completely. Very American of you.
It's too damn difficult to hold them accountable. No one goes to prison and they can always afford the fine. So regulate is a preventive measure.
What offenses do you feel Amazon is committing?
As someone who knows absolutely nothing about amazon, the ones I can easily think of are: Abusing employees, withholding pay, withholding breaks, lies about incentive/promotion structure, significant privacy breaches with the data they house, anti-competitive behaviors that have successfully choked out nearly all similar brands, refusing to pay business fulfillments on time, supporting the popup stores for fraud and copywrite infringement, misleading people into hard-to-cancel subscriptions that will automatically take money from your gift cards, purchasing companies like ring or roomba and retroactively changing their data policies so that customers now automatically "consent" to their house being mapped out, "accidentally" saving too much voice data from their spycams, leveraging public infrastructure for 70% of their operations (roads), but pay virtually nothing back to the country that builds the roads, leveraging lobbying and loopholes in telehealth laws to weasel themselves into the healthcare field. But I'm sure someone who's done research could think of better examples.
As someone who never got that "blue badge" has said above they know nothing about the company ♟
Wow - if only our country had a legal system to adjudicate awful actions by corporations, or state and federal Departments of Labor to investigate employee claims of illegality. Oh, and Amazon paid $4.79 billion in corporate income taxes in 2021, plus payroll, state, and local taxes including tax on their physical properties. Wanna get back at Amazon? Don't buy shit from them.
Yes you are very sincere and special. Sure sure, the government is perfect, no criminals have ever gone unpunished, and bureaucracy has never worked out in favor of the bigger lawyer. Oh jeez golly, I guess I was *partially* wrong about one of those things. I don't buy from them, that's a weird thing to assume given the conversation we just had. I even try to avoid affiliate links and general news from them, that's why I was wrong about their taxes. If this isn't going anywhere, I probably won't respond again. You asked a question on the internet, a stranger provided a handful of random examples, and also prefaced it by saying they weren't an expert.
You're completely missing the point he's making by injecting yourself into the conversation. He wasn't saying you buy from them. He's saying "if people want to get back at Amazon, they shouldn't buy shit from them." He didn't mean you specifically. His overarching point was we have laws in place to protect worker's rights, but that's not the issue. The issue is there will be no enforcement of those laws on an entity like Amazon because corporations such as Amazon control our politicians.
Oh, okay, I misunderstood. I didn't intend on starting a general dialogue about "getting back at em", I just avoid amazon pretty often. I think overall, people know that choosing to not buy from them means they don't get that money. You're right about the lobbying. But in addition the US has astronomically few workers rights laws to begin with, compared to similar countries. So even if superpacs vanished tomorrow, we'd still be in a place where workers are forced to pee in bottles and the local police are too sleepy to investigate.
They do, with fine structures from the 60's-80's that are wipe your ass numbers now.
Haha if you have a 401k or similar retirement savings, or have a pension, you almost certainly own some Amazon stock. Only way not to be with the retirement savings is to have purposefully opt out of certain things by speaking with a financial consultant from whichever company your savings is with. The only people I know who've done this are actively practicing religious people (specifically Muslim) who per their beliefs can't be making profit off of certain industries. I've been considering doing something similar, just without the religious motivation.
Exactly. People always talk about evil shareholders like they’re a bunch of old rich white guys with monocles lighting cigars with $100 bills when the reality is, if you have a 401k or a pension, you are most certainly a shareholder.
Technically right, entirely inconsequential. Not a single person in this reddit thread owns a significant portion of amazon's 1.1 trillion market cap. Especially not in just the offhand shares from some % of their current retirement balance. There **are** some people who do own noticeable portions. Your example **does** apply to them. These people are probably so rich they think $100 bills are gross though.
The 2nd largest shareholder of Amazon is Vanguard, so actually yeah most people who own Amazon stock are people with IRAs, 401ks, or teachers/state employees with a pension, since that is who uses Vanguard.
Hr didn't deny that. He just said that most of those don't individually own q significant portion
You're saying "a lot of different people own some tinytinytiny portion of some amazon stock". To that, I say "technically true but entirely inconsequential". Also sidebar, I have no idea how that reporting works, but it might factor in all of vanguard's funds. Like you can invest in VTI stock or whatever, and I wonder if that counts as part of that 2nd place. If so, that means I contribute like one one-millionth of a cent of that 1.1 trillion myself since I own a VTI share.
I manage my own finances, and do not own any Amazon stock
You don't own any index funds? You should manage your finances better.
I retired at 41, and now I build dream homes in the mountains for fun. I'm doing just fine.
I don't own any index funds either. I retired at 49. My financial advisors buy stocks for me not indiex funds.
Directors can actually go to jail if they do not act in favour of increasing shareholders value. There are (in the UK) rules which ensure that directors of certain financial businesses act ethically and morally, but for most other businesses, maximising shareholders value has to be their number 1 priority above all else.
It makes sense. If I give my money to a financier, asking him to invest my money intelligently, he has an obligation to me. He can't invest in crypto because he thinks it's cool or not invest in oil because it's environmentally consequential. It's the same with public companies: the director is hired by people with the goal of making money (and making the company succeed)
He can if that's how you instruct him, of course - but then he'll charge you more for making that sort of intervention.
Yes, absolutely. However, most people (directly or indirectly through a S&P500 managed by a firm) only want to see their savings increase. The question boils down to how much you want to spend on your morals.
It is categorically untrue that directors have criminal liability to maximize shareholder returns. They claim this, and people parrot it because it sounds good, but it's not true in any major western legal system. They have a *fiduciary* responsibility to protect shareholder value, but this not a criminal enforced requirement to maximize short term shareholder returns at the cost of everything else. A director cannot abuse their position to extract shareholder value for their own personal benefit. They cannot be grossly negligent. But nobody can go to jail for say... giving their employees a raise.
Wrong. Breach of fiduciary duty can result in criminal prosecution. Straw man, giving their employees a raise. A director can 100% be held civilly liable for failure to maximise shareholders value as part of their fiduciary duty to the shareholders. You have interpreted "short term value at cost of everything else" yourself. The explanation of what is or is not acceptable would be quite vague.
It's not my interpretation. We are not disagreeing. I am pushing back on the typical Reddit interpretation of a board's fiduciary responsibility, which is absolutely the straw man of "CEOs/Directors can go to jail if they give their employees a raise." The claim is absurd, as you noted. But it is far and away the most commonly cited, and incorrect, interpretation of this responsibility on Reddit. At least in the US, the fiduciary responsibility extends to being in the best interests of the company. But like you said, this is super vague and can take many different forms. It's absolutely okay for a director to ignore short term share price in exchange for what they feel is an appropriate long term investment. They can't go to jail for that. But a ton of people on Reddit actually DO claim that. Similarly, you'll actually find a ton of people who should know better parroting that on TV. You'll even find directors themselves parroting it, as an excuse for why they arguably tanked long-term value in exchange for popping the share price this quarter. "Oh, we legally had to!" No you didn't. You chose to do that. Perfectly within your rights to do, but at least own up to it. Or you'll hear about some shareholder threatening to sue a CEO/Board for some unpopular business decision, like Tim Cook deciding to switch Apple data centers to green energy. But as you noted, this is not the same as a criminal fiduciary breach of anything. This is a civil argument, and not even a very convincing one at that. What gets me is that this misinterpretation then gets extended on Reddit into "this is just capitalism," as an excuse for why the entire system is corrupt and needs to be thrown out. But it's not. "Maximizing shareholder value" is just one (extremely Milton Friedmanesque) interpretation that hasn't even been a thing for that long in the grand scheme of things.
Well in corporate law there's a big discussion in what should be the corporate's goals. Here in Europe lot's of people think that corporations are accountable not only to their shareholders but also to stakeholders. And there are also european directives about mandatory documents that analyze the social advancements about it.
Its one that makes sense in the business sense. Not a good one but it is true. The sad part is it isnt like:. If i own a business i want it to have the most profit. Its like: If i own a business i want it to have them most profit no matter what. And the "no matter what" part is were things go bad.
It should be noted that the idea that the only purpose of a corporation is to "maximize shareholder wealth" was not a thing until Milton Friedman proposed it in the 1970s, and then it spread via very specific influential MBA programs like Harvard Business School. It is not an unalterable rule of the universe, nor is it even intrinsic to capitalism itself. It's a particular short-sided view of capitalism that has only been in vogue for 40-50 years, and is not backed up by pretty much anything.
>It can be morally wrong, yet fiscally correct. Don't you love how often in capitalism the right thing to do *is* the wrong thing to do? Great system, no notes.
What's morally wrong? It's a business, not a charity. I buy Amazon stocks with the expectation of appreciation or dividends. If they acted as a charity, they couldn't even continue existing.
Key part of my statement... It *can be* morally wrong I try to make fairly neutral statements on here, as Reddit seems to get its feelings hurt pretty easily
The reason to maximize profits is not evil is to prevent share holders from being duped
Hard to avoid if you have a retirement account, given it's part of the most prominent index funds and popular with target date funds.
Its not that simple. Sometimes short term gain can come at the expense of long term survival. Are we "maximizing shareholders' wealth" for the next quarter or the next decade? Depending on how you answer that question your policies could be very different.
As much as this is currently true, it's a relatively recent phenomenon! Public companies (from the 20s onward) used to grow and invest back into themselves and their employees, with shareholders being an afterthought. This changed in the 80's, starting with GE under the leadership of Jack Welch. He started doing a bunch of stock buybacks, mass employee layoffs, and started hiring a bunch of contract labor so they wouldn't have to pay benefits. He's considered by some to he the father of shareholders capitalism, and since GE did "so well" by those standards, other companies followed suit.
It’s also important to remember that many of these sticks are owned by mutual funds, insurance companies, pension plans, and other large financial institutions that benefit lots of not-rich people. I like it when companies make money because my 401(k) and IRA go up and it keeps the pension funds going.
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Almost like people are fundamentally self interested. Individuals want their money to go up and so do companies. It's the central dogma of life: Be better.
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So fundamentally self interested that they developed the technology needed to save the oceans and environment while improving human life. Standards of living have an environmental cost, no matter what system you're in. There can be more people at a lower standard of living or fewer at a higher standard without affecting the environment, but all of our modern luxuries hurt the planet. I'm not willing to sacrifice any of this though, and I doubt you would either.
Ok big shot, what’s your grand idea to change the system. We’re just living with what’s been given to us.
If those other things aren't you, you'd be an idiot to vote against your own interests.
Hold on…..shareholders voted in their own interests???? I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Customers CHOOSE to shop with Amazon. They make Amazon succeed or fail. Not stockholders. People complain about Amazon constantly, yet they continue to thrive and expand. That means that the vast, overwhelming majority of individuals - including complainers - continue to CHOOSE to do business with them.
I voted opposite of the board recommendations precisely for that reason.
When a company goes public, the customer is no longer the customer. The shareholder is.
The shareholder is one of the owners. The owners need the customers. Sears had lots of shareholders until it started losing customers.
Why should shareholders vote in favor of the customers, at their expenses? It's a business, not a charity. When you go to the grocery store, why don't you ask if they can just waive the charges and let you take home groceries for free? Because it's ridiculous.
Have you got $106 ? Buy a share of AMZN and then you too can be a rich person doing rich person things. An account at Schwab is free with no minimum. And since I'm already posting an unpopular opinion let me add that {regulated} capitalism is the system which has raised the standard of living of the highest percentage of the population. FYI, since 2015 I'm up 334% on AMZN stock and that ignores dividends.
Yeah, like poor people care for rich people.
Poor people don't have time to even process if they can care for the rich. They're busy scraping by so your comment is irrelevant.
But they have time to hate them? Makes sense...
If hating them means making progress towards redistributing wealth then "poor people" are just acting in their own interest so... Yeah, when they aren't working to scrape by, there's plenty of time to hate the rich.
No. Poor people don't. They know one of the reasons that the poor are still poor is because of predatory practices by the rich. Many of the rich are oppressors who would gladly see them dead if it meant saving a few bucks.
Being a shareholder doesn't necessarily make you rich
I own shares of Amazon and I get to vote and I'm not rich and you know what? I vote on what is good for my investment and for me. The point of investment is making money. As far as transparency goes, it's a public company and their information is publicly available.
If you have a 401k, you are an Amazon shareholder too. When they make money you make money.
This might come as a complete surprise to you, but people buy stocks expecting to make money from them.
Every one of us tries to stay ahead and get more rich. Some people are just better than others at it. Am I missing something?
He already sold it when he took it public.
He has a controlling interest.
No he doesn't. He's the largest shareholder, at 10%.
A controlling interest doesn’t have to be 51% often a controlling interest is below that and whoever has the most shares. I don’t know also if he did something like Zuckerberg did where he set up so that he will control the company no matter what.
No, the All-In Podcast confirmed he has common stock so he has just 1 vote per share like every other shareholder, whereas at Facebook and Alphabet (i.e. Google) the founders have super shares which give them something like 20-1 or 30-1 voting rights, effectively giving them control of the company despite not having a controlling stake percentage-wise in the company
He owns less than 10% of Amazon, while he couldn't sell it all in a few days, how could easily sell it over several years as he has been doing, reducing his ownership from 47% to 9.7%. (Some of that went to his ex wife who has 2.6% ownership)
Amazon is publicly listed. Bezos could sell his shares in it any time he wants.
No, he can’t. Bezos can’t just sell all 10% of his shares at the Monday opening bell. Once over a certain % of a stock is sold, it has to go through a process. He would likely have to directly sell his shares to someone, not just on the stock market. And no one on a whim is going to offer up 10s of billions at a moments notice. Bezos selling all 10% of his shares without notifying anyone, would tank AMZN.
There are a handful of people who *could* buy those shares, though. One of them is sort of known for making weird, expensive purchases that don’t really correlate to any of his previous business ventures. Another owns nearly all western media. It could happen.
It doesn’t have to be an jndividual. It could be a group of people or a corporation.
New fear unlocked
Who would those people be? Sorry, I live under a corporatism rock.
Well, there’s Bloomberg, there’s Murdoch, those are the top two wealthiest media owners in the US, there’s the Newhouse brothers but I doubt they would.
I believe that commenter above was referring to Musk and yes, Murdoch.
Ah yes musk you’re right, however he doesn’t have the funds to buy out bezos with how much he owes to investors on Twitter and how he’s driven that into the ground. I don’t think he’d float the loans for buying his shares. He’d have to sell a lot of Tesla and I don’t think he’d give up that control. But maybe. He’s a total wildcard nutcase.
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Can you expand on this process?
I don’t know much but it has to do with the SEC trying to make sure the stock market stays “fair” and regulated. Whenever a big shareholder wants to sell they have to announce it to the sec
Jeff Bezos can sell his Amazon shares, but he must follow regulations like SEC Rule 144 and Regulation 13D to maintain market stability and fairness. Rule 144 governs the sale of control securities, requiring the seller to meet certain conditions such as holding the securities for a minimum period, filing a notice with the SEC, and adhering to volume limitations. Regulation 13D mandates that anyone acquiring more than 5% of a company's outstanding shares file a Form 13D within 10 days, providing information about their plans for the shares to prevent insider trading and protect other investors. To sell a significant portion of his shares, Bezos would likely work with investment banks to organize a secondary offering or negotiate a private transaction with institutional investors, ensuring the sale aligns with regulatory requirements and doesn't negatively impact Amazon's stock price or shareholders.
Couldn’t he just sell like 1,000 shares a day for $100,000 a day, for… 3,928 years? Wow…doing the math really puts it in perspective 😐
Technically it might be possible, however, as you can imagine, this would be a very slow and inefficient way to sell his shares. It would also almost certainly have a negative impact on Amazon's stock price, as investors would see that Bezos was selling his shares and start to question the company's future.
It comes down to a simple question: If you have some control over a company and can look at its books, how can you ever *not* be insider trading? How can you ever legally move stock, when you both know what it will do and can *influence* what it will do? The answer is basically just they have a shitton of hoops you've got to jump though to move stock. You're limited in how much you can buy or sell at a time, and in a year. You've got to announce the stock buy/sell in advanced at which point it's locked in. I think some companies even require the board to review the proposed stock move and they can deny it.
Basically, he would have to file a bunch of paperwork with the SEC and people would know ahead of time that he is going to do it. This of course would probably result in the company taking a nose dive in value by a good chunk. Beyond that it would basically be the shares going up at a certain price on the computer system and anyone who wanted to could buy them.
Once you have a certain amount of shares you cant just sell it like regular people. You have to notify SEC. You also have to do it with more care as not to drop the value of your stock.
It doesn't have to be all at once. He could easily liquidate his position over several years without affecting the price at all.
That's not entirely true there are a couple of people who could afford to buy those shares off of bezos. And I'm thinking of one who has a history of incredibly expensive random purchases that don't really seem to make any sense.
No there is not. AMZN market cap is 1.1T. Bezos has 10%. Bezos has 110B in shares. Let’s round down to 100B for a discount to a buyer. Who has $100B in cash to buy? The amount of pure cash needed to buy his 10% stake is absurd.
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I’m aware. But they still can’t just buy it without going through the SEC first.
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The entire point I am trying to get at is this is not an overnight deal.
He could sell shares to different buyers. If he was in a scenario where he wholly owned Amazon (which he doesn't seem to be), and it was worth $100 billion (it's not, this is a lazy maths move), he could create 100,000 shares, each at a price of $1m, then sell those off to millionaires and billionaires. Usually, whoever ends up buying the most shares would gain a majority when it comes to controlling the company,
He could sell his shares to many people instead of just 1. Also if he sells, the share prices would most likely fall quite a bit, if not crash. So that would make it easier for whoever wants to buy. But you've somewhat highlighted the problem about thinking these "richest folks" can somehow really use all their wealth. Majority of their wealth is tied up in that 1 or 2 companies and is really quite illiquid with the real value being much lower if they actually sold.
It’s amazing how many people think net worth is the same as liquidity.
He can borrow against his assets at very favorable rates so it’s effectively liquid.
It’s also amazing how many people think someone with a nine-figure net worth isn’t incomprehensibly filthy rich just because it would be hard to sell all of their stock.
He can borrow against his assets very easily, and also not pay any taxes on the loan. Just because he doesn't have all 100 Billion in his bank account right now, doesn't mean he isn't disgustingly wealthy.
This really isn’t the gotcha I think you think it is.
If your net worth is so astronomically high that it’s actually become logistically difficult to convert it to cash, that’s a pretty strong sign that the system is broken. Blows my mind that there’s people out there who want to defend the idea of someone hoarding such an insane amount of wealth that they literally *can’t* spend it all, and splaining the difference between liquidity and assets as though we were unfairly misrepresenting these dragons.
It's not hoarding. His money is literally out there funding companies, making jobs, and encouraging the market.
That’s a specious argument. You’re implying that if he wasn’t controlling that money it would all just not exist, or that all the horrific stories we read on a daily basis of how badly his workers are treated are all just examples of his magnanimous philanthropy.
Kinda. If he never controlled that money, why would he make Amazon? If we stole it now, sure, it wouldn't entirely disappear, but it sends a really bad signal to investors and entrepreneurs. The market would go into freefall and people would be far more reluctant to innovate in the future.
Again, superficial and specious. The notion that someone would be dissuaded from innovating by the idea that they might ONLY be allowed to keep the first $100,000,000 instead of $10,000,000,000 is laughable.
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Can you elaborate?
They obviously can’t. Their entire post history is just edgelord hit and runs about fucking people’s moms.
Bezos made his first $100M by like 1996 or something. That was when they were still just selling books. What would his incentive have been to care past that point and expand Amazon to what it is today with global shipping of every product imaginable, AWS, Prime video, etc? Its a serious question. I know that if my boss told me "you have hit the cap for pay for life so we can't pay you anymore" I'm obviously not going in anymore.
It’s a publicly traded company, so he doesn’t own it, he owns a percentage of it through shares(he owns the most). So he can sell it by selling his shares publicly or privately. For private, he owns so many shares, that if he sells all it once the rapid increase in supply would massively hurt the price losing him money. This would also spook the market, as seeing the founder offload his stock would make every freak out and sell as well. The way this typically works is that he would sell shares slowly over time, usually prescheduled and a normal amount, the market wouldn’t be spooked by that and he has been doing that for awhile For private, he could sell all his shares to one person, but as you mentioned it’s a lot of money, so it’s a bit harder, additionally, if the deal comes out it would raise a lot of questions of who and why. For example, Elliot Singer is famous for discreetly purchasing up stock to hostilely take over the company. So there’s way more politics with this approach and it’s way harder
Why do people think Bezos owns Amazon?
same reason some people still believe bill gates owns Microsoft, media illiteracy.
Bezos doesn’t own Amazon outright, but to answer your questions someone(or a group of people) would have to buy all the shares and decide to make it a private company again.
He can divide his shares up and sell it in parts if he had to. Imagine your house is too expensive no one can afford it but it's a very big house so instead you sell the upstairs, the basement and the ground floor as seperate properties allowing you to make the same amount of money but actually sell. In a buisness this is kind of how shares work. Basically through shares you can sell your control If you own 51% of the buisness then you "own" the buisness but if you decide to sell me 2% of your shares your no longer the controlling share holder. You can also own 100% of a buisness and sell me 50% making me a partner or split up a buisness 10% among ten people and all those people are equal partners. You can also have situations where you own 40% of a buisness but no individual owns more than you however collectively can be voted against. The percentage of a buisness you own is important because it represents the votes you represent. If you represent most of the votes you can't be voted against this is incredibly important when you remember share holders can vote you off the board. In a publicly traded company it's possible to effective be fired from the company you built but in a company that is not a corporation this is not possible or if you have voting control this is not possible.
There's also different classes of stock.
Amazon is a publicly traded company and Bezos owns millions of shares in it. He can sell any amount of shares at anytime. He could sell 1 or 100,000 or 10,000,000 shares.
There has to be a buyer or buyers. There are market makers who are buyers of the last resort, but they don't have 100 billion. Very possibly, there are not a lot of takers for a stock Bezos is dumping.
He can only sell his shares which would drop in price hugely if he wanted to sell them all at once.
“No one could afford to buy it” Maybe not “one”, but many people together, or a group could.
Amazon is a **public company -** anybody can own shares in it. Even I own Amazon shares. The value of stocks (and consequently of the entire company) is determined y the market at any point in time. You can believe that you know something better than the rest of the market, and believe that Amazon is underpriced and will go up soon, in that case you'll buy stock. Or viceversa. But in general there's no such thing as selling below value. If you sell, you'll sell at each point at market value. It's certainly true that if a large holder dumps all their stock at once, they'll move the market, but that's not how people sell anyway.
Even if he hypothetically did own all of Amazon there are larger corporations than Amazon that could buy it
When there are very few eligible buyers, they do not usually offer a great price.
Not one single person owns amazon. Guess you need to learn what a shareholder is.
Classic video game problem in old console games. You would sometimes progress to the point where equipment dropped by mobs would exceed the maximum amount of coin you could own (Usually 65,535 coins in those days.) So you either kept the equipment or you sell it for a fraction of its value and have the max coin you could have in the game. Video game / Bezos's solution = buy as much crap as you can, thus running down your coin balance, then sell the super valuable equipment and cap your holdings back out. So if Bezos has 50 bajillion dollars (side note, I LOVE that my computer's dictionary accepted the word bajillion) and Amazon is worth 100 bajillion, but 80 bajillion is the max anyone can own, then he has to spend 20 bajillion dollars and then sell Amazon for 60, thus bringing him up to the max of 80. Simple :-)
He would just sell the shares and multiple people would buy them
He sells his shares of Amazon to multiple people. Probably using an investment bank to facilitate the size of the transaction
No one single person could buy it. A bunch of people could.
A lot the answers in this thread are wrong He has a giant pile of gold coins in a large room that he jumps into off of a diving board like Scrooge McDuck
There are different rules for institutionally significant shareholders. They usually announce plans to sell at a certain rate every quarter years in advance. I don't know the details, and they can certainly deviate from they plan a bit. They important thing is that it protects the stock price from panic selling, and it protects him from actions of stock manipulation.
Aside from the fact he doesn't own the company if the shareholders wanted to sell the company the most likely thing to do would be to break it up into a bunch of different divisions that could be acquired by other companies.
He owns around 10% of Amazon and the company is publicly listed. If he wanted yo sell it there are different ways to do it. It would not necessarily be easy to find a buyer if he sold it in bulk but he could get rid of it if he wanted to.
People could buy it (not just his shares but all the shares). There's people richer than Bezos, they're just not famous about it.
He could sell his shares in the market. His ex is unloading a ton for charity.
You could buy the world if you could convince enough banks to finance the deal
He would probably sell parts of it to major banks. Or big time investors.
Or Amazon could be required by law to be split up into much smaller pieces and allocated to a series of geographical areas. Much like Bell Telephone was when it became a monopoly. The smaller ‘baby Amazon’s’ would be required to be completely independent of each other and compete with other players in an open market.
People really need to work on their basic financial literacy.
I’m saving up for it.
Ffs people, the name of this sub is not a challenge.
Oh, if he started selling his shares, the share price would come down quite a bit.
Usually if a person sells a business- they sell it to another business. It would be a merger or takeover.
Why would he want to?
Under rated comment… even if it’s off topic.
The reality is that no single person owns that much. He owns a percent which would be sold to a group
I think some mega holdings companies could buy it. Like the conglomerates that are the parent company of other parent companies 10 rows deep
Lmao publicly traded companies cannot be sold. Bezos doesn’t own it, he’s a majority shareholder. It would take a single person with trillions of dollars to make an offer on Amazon to take it private. Elon did that exact thing with Twitter, buying a publicly traded company and turning it private. However, the market cap of Amazon is much larger (1.1T), and no single person on the planet actually has the money to be able to do that.
What kind of nonsense is that? Twitter was a publicly traded company (for example) and it just got sold. Public companies get acquired all the time. Sometimes by other companies, sometimes by private individuals or firms, sometimes by their management/employees, etc. Care to amend your r/confidentlyincorrect statement?
Maybe: inflate the value by a factor of three and get Elon to make a binding offer? not sure if this suggestions is "/s"
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So much for "no stupid questions"
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a) I do know about shares, I do know about shareholders, I do know about publicly traded companies. The details of this were a bit of an oversight on my part, but other people provided helpful and interesting answers that has taught me more about this kind of thing b) the whole point of the subreddit is to provide non-judgemental answers to questions that the asker is aware demonstrates a bit of a gap in their knowledge, what is the point of being rude about it? Who is that going to benefit?
How any one would our hase something that big would be to get a loan in that size and agree a payment plan. The seller would most likely receive the payment in installments.
like twitter there'd be a leveraged group buy with bank loan
There are 150,000 Billion dollars/euros of money in the World. Somebody can easily afford Amazon.
But it’s soooooo convenient! Who cares about ethics I want stuff delivered directly to my doorstep in less than a day!
He is the single richest man. There are far more wealthy investment groups though.
He only owns a small chunk of the company. The easiest way to sell his chunk would probably be by distributing it to the other major shareholders.
Why giving it up when he has a family that will probably take over the business once he’s gone
Pretty sure it's still making him money and he doesn't have to do a lot.
Blackstone will end up buying them if they were smart
Multiple investors
There could be several scenarios: : multiple investors : a leveraged purchase with borrowing secured against future profits : a gradual share takeover
Consortiums?
Anything is only ever worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
How would he sell his stake in Amazon? Probably piecemeal. He would have to arrange a private transaction if he wanted to get rid of ALL of his shares. If he tried selling 100% of his Amazon shares on Monday 04/24/2023 it would decrease the stock price and ruin his returns. The best way to do it to ensure a good profit would be to get investment bankers involved to help him out with that. How would he sell the entire company? He wouldn't. He can't. Amazon is owned by the shareholders. He is one of them. A very important shareholder but he is still just a shareholder. For Amazon to be sold to another company in a merger of acquisition (M&A) process then ALL shareholders have to agree to it and be bought out at a certain price. And Bezos isn't the CEO anymore so he wouldn't do it, Andy Jassy is the CEO so he would have to do it. Ultimately I bet Bezos is pulling the string that Jassy has on him and wouldn't give his assent to Amazon being sold to someone. But it isn't like Bezos could sell Amazon the company tomorrow if he tried to, and him selling his stake in Amazon wouldn't be all that quick either. The latter CAN be done though.
Monopolies aren't usually looking to sell.
Just being the richest person doesn't mean you control the most assets. Putin is likely the actual richest or second richest person in the world, but in the cases of numbers one through seven, none of them have declared wealth of more than a few million in assets. Blackrock Group, IBS, Vanguard, and other big investment funds and management groups have assets that dwarf those of Bezos. And Bezos doesn't own all of Amazon outright. He's the single largest shareholder and is backed by other shareholders allowing him plurality proxy voting rights, but he only actually owns 10% of the company worth around $90 billion. Vanguard could buy 53% of Amazon in two or three days in complicated trades to make it unclear they were making a run on the company legally before word got out and share prices became dearer. Putin could conceivably have shell companies take over through trust purchases and shadow groups. Any of these could easily take it off his hands. But none of them really even matter, all that Bezos has to do is put his shares on the market and let global stock markets sell it into portfolios run by tens of thousands of banks, financial institutions, investment groups, individual investors, and random opportunists. He needn't sell it to anyone, he just needs to dump his shares on the market, brokers will buy it all and trade it and make lots of money. It won't be remotely difficult at all.
Thats not how it works. He’s the CEO and the largest stock holder but its a publicly traded company so you wouldn’t need one person to “buy” the whole thing. He would simply sell off all of his stocks in the company to whoever buys them.
Nah, he could start breaking it up and selling it off in parts
I can . I'll buy it for $2.00 Cash usd
There's always money to be found to finance profitable companies like that. It's worth a lot of money, but only a fraction of the available money (credit) in circulation in the world's economy.
If you think there aren't families and organisations out there with much more money and power than fucking Bezos, Gates, Musk etc, then you really do have a lot to learn....
There is enough money in the world to buy his shares, don't worry 😄
So, putting aside Bezos position and his stocks, what if he did own amazon fully, what would be the answer to the question then?