‘If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again’: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and novelist wife MacKenzie
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and novelist MacKenzie Bezos 2
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and novelist MacKenzie Bezos have announced they are divorcing, through a joint statement on Wednesday.
Jeff Bezos, 54, shared the announcement on his personal Twitter account shortly after 9am Eastern, signed by both him and MacKenzie.
‘As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,’ the statement read.
‘If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again.’
Jeff Bezos is worth close to $140 billion. The statement did not mention how the two will split that fortune, though experts believed that’s already been hashed out.
Much of that dollar amount comes from his 16 percent ownership stake in Amazon, which briefly became the second US-based company to reach a $1 trillion valuation in September, behind Apple in August.
Amazon is now valued at $777.8 billion, and passed Microsoft this week to become the world’s biggest publicly traded company by market capitalization.
Amazon shares were down 0.2 percent in midday trading on Wednesday.
The divorce should have no material impact on the company and its shares, said Thomas Forte, an analyst at DA Davidson & Co.
Two-time author MacKenzie Bezos, 48, who won an American Book Award in 2006, was one of the first employees of Amazon at its founding, doing accounting for the start-up.
The two, who both graduated from Princeton University six years apart, live in Washington, which is a community property state, and that means all assets acquired during the marriage by either spouse are split equally unless there’s a prenuptial agreement stating otherwise.
The division of the Bezos’ assets will be complicated because the two will continue to pursue joint ventures, according to the joint statement.
‘We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other,’ the statement read.
‘We’ve had such a great life together as a married couple, and we also see wonderful futures ahead, as parents, friends, partners in ventures and projects, and as individuals pursuing ventures and adventures.
‘Though the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends.’
The amicable tenor of the divorce announcement makes it highly likely that the couple has already reached an agreement on how to divide their assets, Jennifer Payseno, a family lawyer at the firm McKinley Irvin in Seattle, said
The bulk of those assets include nearly 79 million shares of Amazon stock, which is currently worth about $130 billion, along with Rocket ship maker Blue Origin and The Washington Post.
