AFP |
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos finalized their divorce Friday to the tune of a $38-billion settlement, Bloomberg News reported.
Under the agreement, MacKenzie Bezos, 49, will receive approximately 19.7 million Amazon.com shares, giving her a four percent stake in the company valued at $38.3 billion, and landing her at 22nd on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the news service said.
The most expensive divorce in history was finalized this afternoon with these few pages. Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are divorced after 25 years of marriage. https://t.co/D1ey9ls1ti pic.twitter.com/mJLOvlEjU9
— Matt Day (@mattmday) July 5, 2019
A judge in Washington state’s King County finalized the divorce. Jeff Bezos, 55, will retain a 12 percent stake and remain the world’s richest man.
MacKenzie Bezos, a novelist, has said she would give all of her stake in The Washington Post and the space exploration firm Blue Origin to her husband as well as voting control of her remaining Amazon stock.
MacKenzie is going to be amazing and thoughtful and effective at philanthropy, and I’m proud of her. Her letter is so beautiful. Go get ‘em MacKenzie. https://t.co/S2gLLBQyRQ
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 28, 2019
She has also promised to donate half her fortune to charity, joining the ranks of the world’s ultra-wealthy philanthropists as a signatory of the Giving Pledge.
The personal life of Jeff Bezos was thrust into the spotlight with the announcement in January that he and his wife were divorcing after 25 years of marriage and the revelation by the National Enquirer that he had been having an affair with a former news anchor, Lauren Sanchez.
Read more: Former wife of Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, to donate half her wealth to charity
Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos married in 1993 and have four children. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in their Seattle garage in 1994 and turned it into a colossus that dominates online retail. Divorce settlements doesn’t inevitably have to obtain costly, there are also cheap divorce attorneys you can trust.
Amazon turns 25 today. Since then, CEO Jeff Bezos has made an average of $6.36 billion per year — that's $17.4 million per day. https://t.co/Qn9EQicBJc pic.twitter.com/lL0EcOVuVV
— CNBC (@CNBC) July 5, 2019
AFP with additional input by GVS news desk