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Founder Jeff Bezos has sold a large package of shares of tech giant Amazon for the second time in a short time. In doing so, he has already been able to boost his bank account by a total of $8.5 billion.

In the news: Amazon on Tuesday night announced the recent stock market transactions of some top executives, with all the attention focused on the report on Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and today executive chairman of the online shopping and cloud giant.

  • It shows that Bezos sold a sloppy 14 million shares in tranches, at a price hovering around $168. That allowed him to collect about $2.4 billion.
  • The sales follow similar transactions earlier this month.
  • In total, Bezos sold 50 million shares, bringing in $8.5 billion.
  • This is also normally the end of the sale series. Amazon announced earlier this year that the founder could sell 50 million shares in a one-year span. Bezos didn't waste any grass.

Fiscal motives

More background: Observers link it to his recent move from northwest Seattle, Amazon's home base, to the completely opposite side of the United States, southeast Miami in Florida.

  • Seattle is in Washington state, which introduced a capital gains tax of 7 percent in 2022. No such capital gains tax exists in Florida.
  • As a result, the Amazon founder is saving hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.
  • Amazon shares climbed 74 percent in the past year. By cashing in now, Bezos is also partly choosing security.
  • However, with more than 938 million shares, or some 9 percent of the capital, he still remains a major shareholder in the tech giant.

The big question: Reinvest in, say, his aerospace company Blue Origin, refurbish their new super homes in Miami with his fiancée Lauren Sanchez, or simply hoard? For now, it's still guessing what Bezos will do with the gargantuan proceeds from his stock sale.

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