Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Has Made Back Half of His Divorce Settlement This Year

It’s been a good year for Jeff Bezos.

The Amazon founder and chief executive has seen his net worth, largely tied to the company’s share price, increase by about $24 billion this year, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index on Wednesday. That jump puts Bezos’ net worth at $138 billion, and means he’s already made up more than half of the money he paid to ex-wife McKenzie Bezos in their highly-publicized divorce last year. As part of their agreement, MacKenzie Bezos was awarded a 4% stake in Amazon, which was worth upwards of $36 billion in mid-2019, when the settlement finalized. Jeff Bezos still holds a comfortable $33 billion cushion on Bill Gates when it comes to the title of being the world’s richest person.

While the global economy has been rocked in the last month due to the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon’s business has been booming. The e-commerce giant’s stock has surged 36% in the last month, hitting $2,300 per share on Wednesday. During that time, Amazon has rejoined the rarest of rare clubs: companies valued at $1 trillion or more. On Wednesday, the company is worth about $1.15 trillion, trailing only Apple ($1.24 trillion) and Microsoft ($1.31 trillion) when it comes to bragging rights. On Monday, Amazon shared plans to hire 75,000 new employees — after recently bringing on another 100,000 new workers — because of increased demand stemming from the pandemic.

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Earlier this month, Bezos said he’d be donating $100 million to U.S. food banks to help with the fallout of COVID-19.

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