Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, announces his divorce on Twitter
The founder of Amazon and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, have said that they separate after 25 years of marriage
Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, gets divorced. The founder of Amazon, with an estimated fortune of more than 164,000 million dollars (about 142,000 million euros), has announced that he will separate from his wife MacKenzie, whom he married in 1993, via Twitter . Amazon shares fell slightly after the announcement.
"We want to tell people how our lives unfold," Bezos wrote. "As our family and closest friends know, after a period of exploration about our relationship and separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our life as friends. We feel incredibly fortunate to have found each other and deeply grateful for each of the years we've been married. " The couple have three children, now teenagers, and a girl who was adopted from China.
Bezos's tweet continues: "If 25 years ago we had known that we were going to separate, we would do it all over again. We have had a great life together as a married couple, and we see a great future on the horizon as parents, friends, fellow adventurers. and projects and as individuals looking for more adventures and projects. Although the denominations now change, we are still a family, and also very dear friends. "
The couple - he will turn 55 next week; She is 48 - they met in New York in 1992, when they were both working for a mutual fund. Both had studied at Princeton, where he graduated in electrical engineering and computer science and she in English philology three years later. "MacKenzie is the type of person who has the resources to get out of bad situations." "She is smart, intelligent and sexy," he commented in an interview with Vogue, before joking that he was also lucky to see her professional profile "before he met her." She said that she had fallen in love with her laugh.
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 9, 2019
In addition to founding Amazon, Bezos owns 16% of the e-commerce giant that he initially founded as a simple bookstore in a Seattle garage in 1994 and is today the most expensive privately held company in the world, with a market value of 797,000. millions of dollars. Another of his most important businesses is The Washington Post newspaper, which he bought in 2013 for 250 million dollars (almost 190 million euros).
It is unknown how the Bezos' immense fortune will be distributed. The couple began their journey in a rented apartment in Seattle, where they now own a huge mansion. In addition, they have four more residences in Los Angeles, Washington, Texas and New York. A fortune that they have also allocated to the causes they support. Thus, in September the couple made the largest known political donation, $ 10 million, to With Honor, a non-party political action committee that helps veteran military men seeking to run for Congress in the United States. In addition, also in mid-September, it created a fund of 2,000 million dollars (1,710 million euros approximately) to help needy families and to finance the creation of preschool centers in poor communities in the United States.
Bezos's charity initiative was announced a week after Amazon first managed to touch a trillion-dollar stock valuation on Wall Street and amid criticism of its business model. The employer's assets are close to 164,000 million, according to the company's listing. They are 65,000 million more than that of Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and considered the second largest fortune in the world.
Bezos bears the last name of his adopted father. His mother, Jacklyn Gise, was a high school student who was 16 when she became pregnant. Her biological father, Ted Jorgensen, was 18 years old. Although they did get married, the young men did not make a home: Jorgensen left and Jackie obtained a divorce from her when her son Jeffrey was 17 months old. Gise married Miguel Bezos, who adopted the child and gave him his surname, as José Cubero, a writer and researcher, explains to this newspaper, who has studied the genealogical tree of 14 generations of the paternal family of the founder of Amazon.
"My dad is my real dad, not my biological dad. His name is Mike. He is a Cuban immigrant. He came here as part of Operation Peter Pan [from Cuba in the 1960s]." This is how Bezos introduced his father, Miguel Bezos, during his dialogue with the billionaire and philanthropist David Rubenstein at the annual meeting of the Washington Economic Club that was held last September.
The origin of the last name Bezos is from Spain, specifically from Villafrechós (Valladolid), from where his ancestors arrived in Cuba, including his great-grandfather Eladio Domingo Bezos Riego, who fought in the Cuban War and later stayed to live in Guáimaro. Bezos Riego died of tuberculosis and was recognized by the King of Spain for "his attitude towards him in the war and there is a document that proves it," explained Bezos.
In the town of Villafrechós everyone knows who Jeff Bezos is since in 2011 he went to visit the town by surprise with his family. "He came with six or seven bodyguards and people did not know who he was, but then over time we found out," explains the mayor, who remembers from that view that "they were very polite." Two years later, in 2013, the parents of the Amazon founder returned to Valladolid, since Miguel Mike Bezos received the Great Cross of Alfonso X the Wise as president of the Bezos Family Foundation for his contribution to educational quality, but "since then Nothing has been heard from them anymore, "the mayor told EFE.
