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Jeff Bezos: World's richest man agrees $35bn divorce
The world's richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and his wife MacKenzie have agreed [to] a record-breaking divorce settlement of at least $35bn (£27bn). Ms Bezos keeps a 4% stake in the online retail giant, worth $35.6bn on its own.
[...] Prior to the settlement, Mr Bezos held a 16.3% stake in Amazon. He will retain 75% of that holding but Ms Bezos has transferred all of her voting rights to her former husband. She will also give up her interests in the Washington Post newspaper and Mr Bezos' space travel firm Blue Origin.
Amazon is now [a] vast online retail business. Last year, it generated sales of $232.8bn and it has helped Mr Bezos and his family amass a fortune of $131bn, according to Forbes magazine.
[...] The divorce deal dwarfs a previous $3.8bn record set in 1999 by art dealer Alec Wildenstein and his wife Jocelyn, who became well-known for her cosmetic surgery.
MacKenzie Bezos (soon to be MacKenzie Tuttle?):
She is now the third-richest woman in the world, as well as one of the wealthiest overall.
Also at USA Today.
See also: MacKenzie Bezos to give half of her $36 billion fortune to charity
Previously: Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO Worth $137 Billion, to Divorce Wife of 25 Years
Jeff Bezos Accuses National Enquirer of Blackmail
The Story Behind the Instant Classic "Bezos Exposes Pecker" Headline
Saudi Arabia's Government Allegedly Hacked Into Jeff Bezos's Phone
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday July 07 2019, @09:58PM (24 children)
Because
They have been married for 25 years, presumably happily for most of that time, and Jeff has given up nothing in his divorce.
MacKenzie can continue to live the life of a fabulously wealthy oligarch and so can Jeff.
From what I gather Jeff decided he wanted to sleep with some other woman so MacKenzie was out the door. The question you should be asking is how much money will the other woman get when that divorce happens?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 07 2019, @10:06PM (19 children)
How do you figure? Because he still has "more than enough money"? Not if he wanted to pump all of the Amazon stock into Blue Origin.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday July 07 2019, @10:19PM (15 children)
Because:
He gave up nothing, because of he keeps control of what he had before, and he also has more than enough money. No need for the quotation marks.
Of course when Lauren Sánchez decides she wants half he will be giving up something.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 07 2019, @10:55PM (9 children)
Mr. Bezos certainly did lose something here, even if it's not voting rights. Hint:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Sunday July 07 2019, @11:22PM (6 children)
Sure. But seriously, how many homes, cars, yachts, jets, suits, gold-plated boxers, solid gold toilets and jewel-encrusted toothbrushes does one person need? Or want, for that matter?
Personally, I could live quite happily and not worry about money ever again with, say $10,000,000.00.
Any material losses that Jeff Bezos may realize won't change his lifestyle or ability to manage his affairs as he wishes at all.
Or am I missing something here?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday July 07 2019, @11:31PM (5 children)
One. I want one solid gold toilet.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday July 07 2019, @11:35PM (4 children)
Maybe not the lid though; that can still be some kind of nice, hygenic, easy-to-clean nonporous plastic. The rest of it, yes, solid gold. One is enough.
I totally wanted to visit the Guggenheim when they had the solid gold toilet exhibit up. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gold-toilet-guggenheim-museum_n_57db8482e4b08cb14094df3a [huffpost.com] Come to think of it, taking a dump once on one of these would probably be enough.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday July 08 2019, @07:09PM (3 children)
Plastic lid?? Cheapskate!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @08:31PM
They now have all stainless public toilets (Sonoma, CA has one that also UV sanitizes between uses.)
A stainless toilet seat and a solid gold toilet would give you the best of both worlds. However, you might want to look into dissimilar metal issues because either the Steel, Gold, or the non-plastic pipes may corrode as a result of the electrical potential differences between them.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Tuesday July 09 2019, @01:35AM (1 child)
Solid metal would feel too cold/hot depending on the temperature differential. It's a comfort thing. What good is a solid gold toilet if you can't even shit in comfort on it?
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday July 09 2019, @02:36AM
If you can afford a gold toilet, you can afford to have the seat temperature controlled. And have it motorized so you don’t have to worry about lifting and lowering it!
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday July 07 2019, @11:43PM (1 child)
He has lost nothing that he will ever notice.
It really makes no difference if he has $20 billion or $30 billion.
He even kept the voting rights for the shares he had to give her.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday July 08 2019, @01:51AM
Yes, it does makes a difference when he has been selling off $1 billion of stock per year to help fund Blue Origin. It's a long road to New Armstrong.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 08 2019, @02:09AM
IANAL nor legal expert, but IIRC in most US states, if Bezos and Lauren Sánchez divorced, she would get 1/2 (maybe) of the marital assets gained during the divorce- not what he had going into the marriage. So if Bezos lost money, she might get nothing. And if he could prove in court that she caused the loss, well, I don't know, but in cases like this it's best if both have pre-nuptial agreements.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 08 2019, @02:42AM (3 children)
There is never more than enough... Blue Origin alone could eat up $100bn in startup costs.
What I find interesting is that the Bezos family fortune amounts to over half of Amazon's highest annual gross sales... even if you give Amazon credit for having run these kinds of sales volumes for 20 years (which they haven't, it's been a growing thing) - the Bezos have managed to pocket > 2.5% of every dollar spent on Amazon - that's almost as good as Visa and MasterCard...
Oh, and while Amazon stock performance over the years has been highly volatile but ultimately impressive, since going public, Visa stock has been simply impressive - and less volatile than the market in general.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @03:04AM
And yet look what you can do with only 3 billion
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration-technologies#section-overview [crunchbase.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday July 08 2019, @03:27AM (1 child)
You might be thinking that Blue Origin is going to be a business, but unless Jeff can come up with some sort of plan that would actually attract investment, it is no more than a very expensive hobby.
If he hasn't got $100 billion to throw at his hobby, and the banks won't lend it to him he will have to take up golf.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 08 2019, @11:38AM
Hey, not saying he's got it hard or anything... but if he had a Gates/Buffet style vision that involved rockets, $100B is easily disposed of in chasing that dream.
Personally, I'd much rather see the large fortunes (top 0.01%) be disposed of quickly, rather than sat upon like Smaug's hoard. You've "earned" it somehow or another, now do something with it within 10 years, or lose it back to the people you "earned" it from in the first place.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @12:41AM
He still has more money and less ex-wives than The Donald.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday July 08 2019, @02:39PM (1 child)
How about because it was never *his* money to begin with. He hadn't made it before they were married, and as a married couple it was *their* money - the whole point of a traditional marriage (even back when women were chattel) is that it's a partnership to allow mutual support and specialization of duties including child rearing, housekeeping, money earning, etc. And by all accounts she made some pretty serious compromises in her own career in order to support his vision. It eventually paid off, but without her own sacrifices and support it might well not have done so.
Divorce is just a question of how you divy up your shared assets, and decide if any ongoing support is called for in exchange for ongoing responsibilities (i.e. if she's been raising the kids while he funds it, that relationship is generally presumed to continue until the kids leave home). If you want to retain private assets in a marriage then you need a pre-nup to establish beforehand that this is *not* a traditional mutual support business partnership.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:07PM
Do you seriously believe that she was given 70 billion dollars to take care of the children?
Also, that is not what marriage ever was. Marriage is the act of a man taking over the rearing of a girl from her father (most commonly in exchange for some monetary or property compensation).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Sunday July 07 2019, @10:55PM (2 children)
My opinion is currently in a quantum state on this. Marriage is a mutual agreement. It depends who wasn't living up to their part of the bargain.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Troll) by Username on Sunday July 07 2019, @11:22PM (1 child)
Marriage is about sacrifice. Sacrificing your single life to dedicate yourself to your spouse and family for the rest of your life. Even if your spouse doesn't live up to your expectations, or you fall out of love, there is no need to get a divorce. He could have happily supported his wife and his girlfriend, his wife should have tried to convince him not to indulge in his sexual desires with other women. Or best both worlds, he takes a second wife. Not like he cannot support two or 12 wives.
This divorce is just him demonstrating his megalomania. About he has the power to do whatever he wants, and ants cannot do anything about it. Truly a horrible person this bezos.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by https on Monday July 08 2019, @02:55PM
If you think giving up the single life is a sacrifice instead of a boon, you're never going to be happily married.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @08:28PM
And he outed himself about it after the Saudis threatened to release it instead.
The result being that his wife was in a good position to claim half or more if they didn't have a prenupt due to the breach of the contract of marriage.
So yeah the settlement she's getting is the least he can do after not just fucking around, but doing it without first getting her permission.