Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has sold shares worth £3.2bn as he cuts his stake in the online retail giant.
He dumped 24 million shares in four trading days, of which he dumped 12 million on Friday and 12 million yesterday, the first time he sold shares since 2021, when he resigned as CEO.
Bezos, 60, founded Amazon in 1994, growing it from an online bookstore to a global marketplace.
The world’s second-richest man (with an estimated fortune of £154bn) recently said he planned to sell 50m shares, worth around £6.7bn at current prices, during the next year.
Bezos has already given away around £190m worth of shares as part of his charitable efforts, most recently in 2022.
Billionaire: Jeff Bezos (pictured with partner Lauren Sanchez) has sold £3.2bn worth of Amazon shares as he cuts his stake in the online retail giant.
Since stepping down as CEO, Bezos has focused on a space company called Blue Origin.
In October, he said he was moving to Miami from Seattle to be close to his parents and Blue Origin operations.
‘Blue Origin needs to be much faster. And it’s one of the reasons I left Amazon a couple of years ago,” he said in December.
The billionaire, who also owns The Washington Post newspaper, did not reveal why he sold Amazon shares, but he did so amid a rally in the US stock market.
The shares have risen almost a fifth in the last six months and were recently boosted by a bumper Christmas.
This helped the online retail giant post stellar figures for the year, with sales reaching £451bn in 2023, up from £403bn the previous year.
Sales in the Christmas quarter reached £133bn. Bezos remains Amazon’s largest shareholder and is the company’s executive chairman.
It is understood that its move to Florida will save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.