Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, finalised the biggest divorce settlement in history on Thursday, leaving him with 75 per cent of their stock in the tech giant and giving her nearly $36 billion in shares.
MacKenzie Bezos said she would give all of her stake in The Washington Post and the space exploration firm Blue Origin to her husband – the world’s richest man – as well as voting control of her remaining Amazon stock.
Jeff Bezos, 55, and MacKenzie, 48, a novelist, married in 1993 and have four children. He founded Amazon in their Seattle garage in 1994 and turned it into a colossus that dominates online retail.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Amazon, which has a market capitalisation of some $890 billion, said MacKenzie Bezos will control 4 per cent of the company’s outstanding common stock.
At Amazon’s current share price that would be worth some $35.6 billion.
According to Forbes magazine, the divorce settlement makes MacKenzie Bezos the third wealthiest woman in the world after L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and Walmart’s Alice Walton.
Jeff Bezos, who now owns 12 per cent of Amazon, remains the world’s richest man…