This is a decrease of 58 million from last year
While Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ mother made a stunning fortune after she invested $245,573 into her son’s fledgling business back in 1995, his ex-wife’s recent financial moves tell a different story.
After receiving 400 million Amazon shares in her 2019 divorce from Jeff Bezos, billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has now reduced her stake in the $2 trillion tech giant by nearly half.
A regulatory filing with the SEC from 30 September shows that Scott now holds 81.1 million shares, a decrease of 58 million from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg.
The Bezos pair split in 2019. (Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty)
That 42% reduction represents approximately $12.6 billion worth of stock at Tuesday’s closing share price. However, it’s unclear whether the dramatic reduction in Amazon holdings resulted from stock sales, charitable donations or some combination of both.
Under the terms of their divorce agreement, Bezos still exercises voting authority over Scott’s holdings and is required to disclose them annually. With an estimated net worth of $32 billion, Scott obtained the vast majority of her wealth through her 2019 divorce from Bezos. Now, she has pledged to give away the bulk of her fortune.
With her 4% stake in the company, she’s given away $19 billion in gifts to more than 2,000 non-profits over the past five years. Meanwhile, Amazon’s share price has more than doubled, meaning even as Scott has given away billions, her remaining stake has continued to grow in value.
Like other billionaires, Scott has become known for her philanthropic approach and even founded her own charity Yield Giving, shortly after splitting with Bezos.
MacKenzie Scott has now reduced her stake in Amazon by nearly half. (Dia Dipasupil/Staff/Getty)
Across the thousands of donations she’s made since 2019, the typical gift amounts to roughly $5 million, with many of the causes being donated to DEI causes.
Interestingly, one of her most recent donations was a $42 million gift to 10,000 Degrees, a Bay Area non-profit that extends college access for low-income and predominantly non-white students. This followed a $70 million donation to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) through the non-profit UNCF.
Launched in 2021, the program aims to help HBCUs close the funding gap compared to predominantly white or elite institutions.
As a result, long-term financial stability and permanent revenue streams are enabled for minority-serving schools.
In contrast, with a net worth of $228.7 billion, making him the world’s fourth-richest person, Bezos married Lauren Sánchez earlier this year. In June, the couple hosted a lavish, celebrity-filled wedding in Venice, reportedly costing around $50 million.
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife sells off $8,000,000,000 in Amazon shares to fund something very important
The soaring stock price has allowed her to give back in a big way
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott has been using her Amazon-bound fortune for good, after selling off billions in shares to give to countless charities and nonprofits.
MacKenzie Scott became the third wealthiest woman in the entire world following her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019, earning stocks worth around $35.6 billion because of her contributions to Amazon from the very beginning.
Unlike Bezos however, who frequently appears atop the list of the richest individuals in the world, Scott has vowed to give away most of her fortune, helping those in need with extremely generous donations.
MacKenzie Scott has donated much of her post-divorce fortune to charity (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
She has just recently sold another $8 billion worth of Amazon shares in order to fund her charitable ventures, which equates to around 11% of her overall total.
As reported by Yahoo! Finance, Scott has sold or donated 255 million Amazon shares – around $37 billion in current value – since divorcing Bezos, with almost all of it going to various charities and nonprofit organizations.
It is recorded that her charitable donations exceed $17 billion across over 2,300 nonprofits, which brings her towards the top of the list when it comes to charitable individuals in the US – one could argue the inverse of Bezos who has increased his own fortune.
While Amazon’s current executive chairman has invested his fair share into different companies, including some that are researching life-extending drugs, Scott’s interests lie in those that help the many, and she often stipulates that there are no conditions for companies receiving her donations.
She has also donated to a wide range of different organizations, including abortion pill delivery services, relief for rural communities, the Howard University College of Medicine, and the Asian-American Journalists Association.
Scott has targeted a wide range of charities with multi-million dollar donations (Jorg Carstensen/dpa/AFP via Getty Images)
She has even gone as far to donate her own mansions to charity, giving away her two Beverly Hills domiciles in a fortune that soars beyond $55 million.
While Scott’s single donation numbers are comparatively small when placed next to some other billionaires, often not exceeding the $10 million mark according to Benzinga, the significantly wide-scale nature of her actions more than makes up for the ‘lower’ monetary values.
Some have even stated that Scott’s donations have emboldened companies in the eyes of other philanthropists, opening them up for further donations beyond her initial actions.
While Bezos remains seemingly happy post-divorce, having now become engaged to his fiancé Lauren Sánchez, it is hard to ignore the disparity between the pair’s actions with their post-break-up fortunes.
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott explains why she keeps giving her money away
She pledged to donate at least half of her fortune
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife has explained why she keeps giving her money away.
MacKenzie Scott divorced the billionaire in 2019 after he disclosed that he was having an affair with former news anchor Lauren Sánchez.
And Scott walked away with a huge settlement – in fact, it was the largest settlement ever to be awarded in a divorce.
The couple divorced in 2019 (Toni Anne Barson/Getty Images)
She received a whopping $38 billion in Amazon stocks, instantly making her the fourth wealthiest woman in the world.
So, nearly six years on from the split, what has Scott been spending her money on?
It turns out that she has been making some pretty sizable donations.
As reported by the New York Times: “They came like gifts from a Secret Santa, $20 million here, $40 million there, all to higher education, but not to the elite universities that usually hog all the attention.
“These donations went to colleges and universities that many people have never heard of, and that tended to serve regional, minority, and lower-income students.”
The president of Prairie View A&M University, Ruth Simmons, revealed that she was ‘stunned’ to learn that Scott was gifting the institution $50 million.
She explained that she had thought she’d misheard the figure and the caller had to repeat ‘five zero’.
It’s the biggest donation the university has ever received.
Writing for Medium, Scott explained that the pandemic inspired her to increase her charitable endeavors and in 2020 alone she gave away $6 billion.
The couple were married for 25 years (Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage/Getty Images)
She said: “This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling.
“Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires.”
Scott also shared that she had been donating to ‘communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital’.
Donating her fortune to worthy causes was something that she had promised to do around the time of her divorce.
And just months after the settlement had been reached, Scott signed the Giving Pledge, which is a commitment to give away at least half of your wealth.
She’s in good company – the pledge is led by Bill and Melinda Gates and has been signed by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan as well as George Lucas and Michael Bloomberg.
In a letter, Scott said: “We each come by the gifts we have to offer by an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand. In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share.
“My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care.”
Featured Image Credit: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New York Times/Toni Anne Barson/Getty Images
Insider claims Jeff Bezos ‘threatened to spend every single penny’ Amazon had on just one project
You don’t get as rich as Jeff Bezos without having a few good ideas, but according to one insider the Amazon founder threatened to spend the company’s entire budget on one project.
Amazon is currently the fourth largest company in the entire world and boasts a market cap of $2.377 trillion, but that could have all gone up in smoke if its founder Jeff Bezos had his way with one particular project in 2011.
There’s no doubt that Bezos knows what he is doing with both money and a company like Amazon, as he’s got more than enough to spend millions on yacht maintenance, buy multiple mansions across the country, and even build a new International Space Station.
Things could be very different though, as according to former Amazon Vice President Ethan Evans, Bezos had to be ‘reigned in’ by Amazon’s CFO at the time over a project that could have sunk the company.
Evans explained in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that this is a classic case of ‘founder mode’:
“CFO: “Jeff, we only have so much money.” Jeff: “How much is that? I might want to spend it.””
While the CFO did manage to convince Bezos away from the idea, his control of 19% of Amazon at the time effectively meant that he could do what he wanted.
“[Bezos] could take any risk he chose in a way that an appointed CEO cannot,” Evans revealed, and it certainly opens up an intriguing conversation surrounding the balance between founders and brought-in executives.
Bezos’ status as founder still didn’t let him take some riskier decisions (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The idea of ‘founders mode’, where a majority-ownership individual is able to brute force their riskier ideas due to greater control, is largely seen as a positive trend in the world of business right now – but it’s not always been the way of success.
Evans points out in the post thread that huge names in business like Warren Buffett and Howard Schultz didn’t start the companies that made them who they are, so it’s far from a hard or fast rule.
Instead, Evans argues that a greater emphasis should be placed on individuals who are able to provide the ‘complete package’ regardless of their founding status, and details that individuals like Bezos and Elon Musk are “smarter and more driven than most of us will ever be.”
While it might have worked out in the end, Bezos’ weight as founder might just have sent Amazon in a downward trajectory. And while Evans isn’t claiming that Jeff isn’t the right fit – far from it – but just that the nature of being a founder, and the riskier decisions that can afford, don’t always work out to be the best option every time.
