Page 123 - Forbes - USA (October 2019)

1. JEFF BEZOS 119 119

$114 BILLION T
SELF-MADE SCORE: *
SOURCE: AMAZON
AGE: 55 RESIDENCE: SEATTLE
PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
In the costliest divorce ever,
Bezos transferred a quarter of
his Amazon shares, now worth
$36.1 billion, to MacKenzie, his
wife of 25 years, earlier this
year (though he kept the voting
rights of those shares). Bezos
also sold $2.8 billion worth of
Amazon stock. He still has a
nearly 12% stake in the $230
billion (2018 sales) e-com-
merce behemoth and remains
the world’s richest person de-
spite a $46 billion drop in the
past year. Bezos, who at age 16
spent a summer as a cook at a
McDonald’s, where he learned
to crack an egg with one hand,
raised the minimum wage for
350,000 U.S.-based Amazon
full-time, part-time, tempo-
rary and seasonal employees
last November to $15 an hour.
In 2018 his philanthropic vehi-
cle, Bezos Day One Fund, do-
nated $97.5 million to 24 or-
ganizations helping homeless
families. In September, Bezos
announced that his company
would spend $100 million on
reforestation projects around
the world, weeks after wildfires
in the Amazon rainforest made
headlines. He also said Ama-
zon would purchase 100,000
electric delivery vehicles.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL PRINCE