Unless I'm missing something 16% is hardly a controlling interest.
Jeff Bezos sells one million Amazon shares, makes one billion dollars
Amazon.com founder, CEO and president Jeff Bezos has sold a million shares in his own company and reaped over a billion dollars from the transaction. As this filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission shows, Bezos last week offloaded 30 parcels of shares, and a million shares in total. Buyers paid …
COMMENTS
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Monday 6th November 2017 06:30 GMT Phil W
To some degree it depends how much anyone else has, if no single other individual owns more than 16% he still has a degree of control.
Certainly at 16% combinations of other shareholders might have greater control but I imagine he sees that as unlikely to be a problem if he's selling shares.
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Monday 6th November 2017 09:45 GMT Spudley
Unless I'm missing something 16% is hardly a controlling interest.
I don't know the specifics of Amazon, but it could be. In between different classes of share, different voting rights, and dilution of the other shares across many owners it's possible to sell a very large proportion of a company while still retaining control.
What this article did fail to do, however, was tell us what percentage of the company was represented by those million shares, and also what kind of shares they were. That would give a clearer picture as to what this sale actually means.
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Monday 6th November 2017 13:39 GMT rh587
I don't know the specifics of Amazon, but it could be. In between different classes of share, different voting rights, and dilution of the other shares across many owners it's possible to sell a very large proportion of a company while still retaining control.
This. IIRC, Elon Musk owns <50% of both SpaceX and Tesla, yet retains outright control by having >50% of the voting shares. Other shareholders are just happy to be along for the ride.
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Monday 6th November 2017 15:32 GMT Stevie
I'd probably advise against building his own submarine.
Well spotted AC.
I wonder what it is about submarines that causes those in them to enter into rampaging murderous states of mind, and then to completely forget they did it.
In order to find out I decided to run an emulation. I hid in the fridge for three days wearing headphones playing monotonous "pinging" noises. While I was thus incommunicado during the experiment my entire family including our dog and the roomba were hacked to pieces by some madman who ran amok with my favorite chainsaw.
The police were their usual unhelpful selves, jumping to the most ridiculous conclusion and arresting me on trumped-up charges. I explained that the blood was from a joint of beef we bought for Friday's dinner that had dripped all over me but they wouldn't listen, citing "trace" evidence and the circumstantial bottle of chain lube oil they found in my trouser pocket.
I was unable to collate my notes and tape recordings owing to them being held in evidence. So I guess we'll never know.
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Monday 6th November 2017 08:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Shame Amazon makes no profit...
The thing is tax is paid on profits not sales. Amazon tries very hard not to make a profit by reinvesting its gains to grow the business, so its tax bill is always going to be low and its growth spectacular. Fortunately the VAT it raises from UK sales does contribute to the UK treasury.
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Monday 6th November 2017 10:44 GMT Sil
Re: Shame Amazon makes no profit...
Amazon isn't trying very hard, it's loosing money but for AWS.
Its eCommerce loss probably won't improve because Walmart must and does react, and so must many retailers around the world.
The 2 decades old exuberance of Amazon's share price is all the more dumbfounding that Alibaba has shown it has the superior business model, oozing money from every pore with very little risk and depreciating assets (it owns almost no infrastructures).
It will take decades, if ever, for Amazon to earn what Alibaba already did.
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Monday 6th November 2017 15:34 GMT Stevie
Bah!
My guess is that part of the dosh will go to establishing their own goods distribution network. I've noticed that my own "2 day delivery" stuff is beginning to show up late, and is at odds with the "track yuour package" data. My guess would be that the delivery systems are being rejiggered.