According to Amazon‘S (NASDAQ: AMZN) According to the most recent filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jeff Bezos owns approximately 1.12 billion shares of the company, giving him a 10.8% stake in the company. As you might expect, this makes Bezos Amazon’s largest shareholder, and by a wide margin. At the time of writing, Bezos’ shares are worth approximately $207 billion.
Amazon’s largest shareholders are institutional investors
Besides Bezos, Amazon’s largest shareholders are institutional investors, as is the case with most publicly traded companies. Financial institutions that offer index funds must own a certain proportion of shares in order to track certain indices. An S&P 500 index fund like the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) must own Amazon stock in proportion to its weight in the index based on the fund’s total assets.
Vanguard is thus Amazon’s largest shareholder, with 7.4% of Amazon shares owned by Vanguard funds and their investors. Black rock (NYSE: BLK) – also a major operator of index funds – is the second largest non-Bezos shareholder, with 6.1% of the company’s shares.
Amazon’s largest individual investors
As for individual investors, the answer is a bit tricky. Unless you are a board member of a publicly traded company, a key executive or own more than 5% of the outstanding shares, your investment does not need to be disclosed. However, of the people in these groups, Amazon CEO (and former director of the company) Andy Jassy is the largest reported individual shareholder, after Jeff Bezos. At the end of 2023, Jassy owned 2,119,566 shares of Amazon, a stake worth approximately $390 million.
However, there is a special case when it comes to Amazon. MacKenzie Scott (Bezos’ ex-wife) received about 4% of Amazon stock as part of the couple’s divorce in 2019. She has since sold a good chunk of the stock, but still owns a decent chunk and is the company’s largest individual shareholder next to Jeff Bezos.
As part of the divorce agreement, Bezos retained voting rights to Scott’s shares, so they are included in his reported ownership. However, the latest proxy makes it clear that Bezos’ share count includes 184,282,131 shares “over which Mr. Bezos has sole voting power and no investment power.”
This implies that Bezos actually owns approximately 938 million shares, giving him and Scott 9% and 1.8% stakes in the company, respectively.
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John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool holds positions in and recommends Amazon and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Who owns the most Amazon shares besides Jeff Bezos? was originally published by The Motley Fool
