The Week in Business: The Meme Stock Bubble Bursts
By Charlotte Cowles
Feb. 7, 2021
Charlotte Cowles
Bezos Bowing Out
Twenty-seven years after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos is handing over his job as chief executive to one of his protégés, Andy Jassy, who leads the company’s lucrative cloud computing division. Mr. Bezos will become Amazon’s executive chairman and take part in high-level decisions, but it’s still the end of an era for the country’s biggest e-commerce retailer. He’s leaving on a pretty high note: Amazon’s latest quarterly sales topped $100 billion for the first time, and the company’s value ($1.7 trillion) has made Mr. Bezos one of the world’s richest people. But there are challenges ahead as the business facesgrowingscrutiny from lawmakers and antitrust regulators over whether it wielded its clout illegally.