Andy Jassy, who is taking over as Amazon chief executive
Credit: Mike Blake
Mr Bezos will be replaced by Andy Jassy, an Amazon veteran who has long been seen as one of Mr Bezos’s key lieutenants, having joined the company in 1997. He founded its lucrative cloud arm Amazon Web Services, one of the big profit-makers in the organisation, and acts as its chief executive.
The beginning of his tenure heading up the broader Amazon organisation, expected to start later this year, will come at a time when the US firm is facing significant regulatory scrutiny from many regulators.
Late last year, the US House Antitrust Committee said the company was among the Big Tech firms which had monopoly power and could face a break-up. The Democrats on the committee said they expected Amazon to have to choose between whether it sold its own products or acted as a marketplace for sellers.
Even on Tuesday, hours after he was named as Amazon chief executive, US politicians were moving to call Mr Jassy in, with Congressman Ken Buck saying he had “some questions” for the new boss.
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, said: “Bezos moving away from the CEO role puts Jassy in the frontline in this battle vs the Beltway.”
However, he said he expected Mr Jassy to come out fighting against any enforced break-up. “Jassy is a cloud titan and will defend keeping the Amazon combined structure intact as it remains key to its broader cloud success.”
Mr Jassy has previously signalled he would take such an approach, telling the Telegraph last year: “I don’t see a high need to spin things out.”
Earlier comments from the new CEO have suggested he may take a more combative approach than Mr Bezos, who has shied away from publicly attacking regulators and only last year appeared before Congress for the first time.
Amazon timeline
Mr Jassy has been vocal on issues such as police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, writing on his Twitter earlier this year: “What will it take for us to refuse to accept these unjust killings of black people? How many people must die, how many generations must endure, how much eyewitness video is required? What else do we need? We need better than what we’re getting from courts and political leaders.”
He was also behind the decision to remove Parler from the web last month, given it was hosted by Amazon Web Services — a move widely praised by Democrats.
Neil Ackerman, a former Amazon executive, said his views on topics such as these may make the relationship with Congress less spikey. "Clearly Andy is someone that can work and likely wants to partner with stakeholders on both sides of the aisle in the USA," he said. "He has a history of caring for people and that is bound to certainly be in his favour."
Mr Jassy has also spoken out about tax changes in Seattle, where Amazon’s headquarters are, and in 2018 commented on a report into proposals to hike taxes for tech companies, saying it was" insane what Seattle’s considering".
CCS Insights’s Nicholas McQuire said what this showed was that “he will not be quiet when it comes to mounting antitrust calls against Amazon”.
He added that Mr Jassy may have more chance of being successful in warding off regulatory pressure than others. “He understands the Chinese walls that exist between the cloud and ecommerce business and this aspect will need to be revealed to the wider public in more detail under his watch in order to better manage the growing antitrust sentiment against Amazon”, Mr McQuire said.
“I see Andy’s appointment as making the potential breakup of Amazon less likely.”
Trade bodies were, however, hopeful that the change in leadership may feed across into better working conditions for Amazon staff.
GMB said there was a "historic opportunity to draw a line under Jeff Bezos’s intense ideological hostility to unions, and instead make improving the lot of workers a top priority".
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