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On February 2, cross-border e-commerce giant Amazon suddenly announced that its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will resign as CEO in the third quarter of 2021 and become the company's executive chairman of the board of directors. The company's CEO will be Andy Jassy, current CEO of Amazon Cloud Service AWS. Regarding his resignation, Bezos said: "I have never been so energetic. This is not about retirement. Just as I will still tap dance to work, I am excited about this transformation." Regarding his life after resigning, Bezos said in an open letter to employees: "I will focus my energy and attention on new products and early plans, the Day One Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post and my other hobbies ." It seems that even the world's richest man with a net worth of 196.2 billion US dollars cannot let go of the poetry and distant places in his heart! However, Bezos did not mention the previously exposed " Project Santos ". The main purpose of this plan is to build a "new online store model" to compete more directly with Shopify . At that time, foreign media reported that this plan was highly valued by Bezos and he might lead the team himself. This is not the first time Bezos has resigned. In 1994, Bezos, who was 30 years old, quit his last job, which he had worked in for four years, and became the vice president of the hedge fund company DESCO. God will give great responsibilities to those who are capable of them. How can a vice president be enough to fulfill Bezos's dream? In November of the same year when he resigned, Bezos created Amazon, one of the world's largest e-commerce platforms, in his garage. As for why the name "Amazon" is used, is there any deep meaning behind it? Bezos explained: " It starts with the letter A so that the company can be ranked first . In addition, 'Amazon' also represents the largest river in the world ." It can be said that from the very beginning, Bezos had great ambitions for the "online bookstore" he founded. Today, 27 years later, the Amazon River is still flowing in reality, and in the Internet electronic world, Amazon has become the world's largest "electronic river" . Amazon, which grew up with the Internet, was successfully listed on NASDAQ in the third year of its establishment. For 27 years, Amazon, run by Bezos, has not only smoothly weathered several world-class financial crises, but even achieved counter-cyclical growth in 2020, a year when the world was turned upside down by the black swan of the COVID-19 pandemic . After announcing Bezos' resignation, Amazon also released its financial report for the fourth quarter of 2020. The financial report showed that Amazon's sales in the fourth quarter were US$125.56 billion , a year-on-year increase of 44%. Net income in the fourth quarter was US$7.2 billion , a year-on-year increase of 121%, and diluted earnings per share were US$14.09. As of today, Amazon's market value has exceeded $1.7 trillion . Now the question is, who is Andy Jassy, who is about to succeed Bezos as Amazon CEO? It is understood that behind Bezos there is an 18-member core management team, also known as "shadow" consultants. In addition to Bezos himself, the team members include 8 executives who report directly to Bezos and 9 second-level subordinates. Jesse, 53, is also a member of Bezos' core management team. He is also a veteran employee of Amazon and has worked at Amazon for 24 years since graduating from Harvard in 1997. Jesse 's greatest achievement at Amazon was the creation of AWS (Amazon Web Services) , the professional cloud computing service provided by Amazon. In 2003, Jesse began to lead Amazon's cloud computing business. Since its launch in 2006, AWS has provided support to enterprises in 190 countries and regions around the world. From the beginning of Amazon's "side business", it has truly grown into a giant in the field of cloud computing. According to Amazon's latest financial report, AWS had revenue of US$12.7 billion and profit of US$3.564 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, with annual revenue reaching US$50 billion . As of October 2020, AWS accounted for approximately 52% of Amazon's revenue and is the department with the largest profit contribution under Amazon. It can be said that Andy Jassy is one of the biggest contributors to Amazon. In fact, the outside world was not surprised at all that Bezos handed over the baton to Jesse. As a veteran employee of Amazon, he has been deeply trusted by Bezos since he joined the company in 1997. The strong growth of AWS also proves Jesse's ability as a leader. Compared with Bezos's clean and neat approach, other bosses are not so worry-free. Not to mention the distant past, let’s just talk about the process of our own “Feng Qingyang” Jack Ma handing over Alibaba to “Xiaoyaozi” Zhang Yong. It can be said to be full of twists and turns. Compared to Jesse, who is Bezos's "direct" confidant, Zhang Yong, who joined Alibaba halfway and was once Shanda's vice president and CFO, was not initially considered by Jack Ma as his preferred successor. In Alibaba's history, Wei Zhe, who was once in charge of B2B, and Lu Zhaoxi, who once took over the CEO baton, were both candidates favored by Jack Ma. However, the outbreak of the B2B blacklist incident and the failure of the IM application "Laiwang" eliminated both Wei Zhe and Lu Zhaoxi from Alibaba. The follow-up of these two events was that Wei Zhe left Alibaba and Lu Zhaoxi was transferred to the position of vice chairman of the Alibaba board of directors, away from the power center. Zhang Yong, who was later appointed as the CEO of Alibaba Group, was the last to join Alibaba. He joined Alibaba in 2007, and his employee number was outside the top 10,000. Even though he entered the industry late, the annual Double Eleven Carnival is now the masterpiece of "Xiaoyaozi". In October 2008, one year after Zhang Yong took office as CFO of Taobao, Huang Ruo, then vice president of Taobao and head of B2C business, was dismissed, and Taobao Mall was suddenly left without a leader. Zhang Yong was appointed to take over the position. In order to bring Taobao Mall back to life, in the second year, Zhang Yong, who was good at sales promotion, targeted November, an awkward period that happened to be between the National Day Golden Week and the Christmas promotion season. Thus, the most "greatest" consumption festival in China's contemporary history emerged. On November 11, 2009, Taobao Mall's transaction volume reached an unprecedented 50 million yuan, and Jack Jones topped the list that year with a sales volume of 5 million yuan. Perhaps even Zhang Yong did not expect at the time that this historic decision would completely change his trajectory in Alibaba, even though he had not yet joined Alibaba as a partner. He served as the president of Tmall in 2011, became the COO of Alibaba in 2013, and became the CEO of Alibaba Group in May 2015. In 2019, he succeeded Jack Ma as the chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba, taking over the mantle from "Feng Qingyang" and ushering in the era of "Xiaoyaozi" at Alibaba . On February 2, Alibaba released its third-quarter financial report for fiscal year 2021. The financial report showed that as of December 31, 2020, Alibaba's quarterly revenue was 221.084 billion yuan , a year-on-year increase of 37%, and its net profit after tax was 77.98 billion yuan , a year-on-year increase of 56%. Among them, Alibaba Cloud's revenue reached 16.1 billion yuan , and its adjusted EBITA profit was 24 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50%. This is also the first time that Alibaba Cloud has achieved break-even in the 11 years since its establishment in 2009. However, after the financial report was released, Alibaba fell 3.85%, and its market value evaporated by US$27.5 billion, or RMB 180 billion.We can see that Alibaba in the era of Xiaoyaozi has not slowed down due to the change of leadership. On the other hand, Amazon is also about to face a change of leadership. What changes will Andy Jassy bring to Amazon? This remains to be seen.
(Source: Maiwen)
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