According to Amazon‘s (NASDAQ: AMZN) most recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, Jeff Bezos beneficially owns approximately 1.12 billion shares of the company’s stock, giving him a 10.8% stake in the business. As you might expect, this makes Bezos Amazon’s largest shareholder, and by a wide margin. As of this writing, Bezos’ shares are worth about $207 billion.
Amazon’s largest shareholders are institutional investors
Beyond 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 amount of the stock to track certain indices. For example, 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.
So, Vanguard is the largest Amazon shareholder, with 7.4% of Amazon shares held by Vanguard funds and their investors. BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) — also a major index fund operator — is the No. 2 non-Bezos shareholder, with 6.1% of the company’s stock.
Amazon’s largest individual investors
As far as individual investors go, the answer is a little tricky. Unless you’re a board member of a public company, a key executive, or own more than 5% of the outstanding shares, your investment isn’t required to be publicly disclosed. However, of the people in those groups, Amazon CEO (and longtime company executive) 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 about $390 million.
There’s a special case when it comes to Amazon, however. MacKenzie Scott (Bezos’ ex-wife) received about 4% of Amazon’s shares as part of the couple’s 2019 divorce. She has since sold off quite a bit of the stake but still owns quite a bit and is the company’s largest individual shareholder besides 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 clarifies that Bezos’ share count includes 184,282,131 shares “as to which Mr. Bezos has sole voting power and no investment power.”
This implies that Bezos actually owns about 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 has positions in and recommends Amazon and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Who Owns the Most Amazon Stock Besides Jeff Bezos? was originally published by The Motley Fool