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Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos sold nearly $2.5 billion worth of shares in his company this week.
According to filings Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bezos sold nearly 740,000 shares on Monday and Tuesday for about $2.48 billion. The stock sales were pre-arranged through a 10b5-1 trading plan, according to the filings.
Bezos is the world’s wealthiest individual, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of about $191 billion. Last year, Bezos sold more than $9 billion in Amazon stock, and he has previously said about $1 billion of that goes every year to his rocket startup, Blue Origin.
Last week, Amazon reported it tripled profits in its first quarter, compared to a year ago, and forecast sales above $110 billion in the second quarter. That is expected to be the last full quarter with Bezos as CEO; earlier this year Bezos said he would step down in the third quarter to become executive chairman of Amazon.
Amazon shares
AMZN,
have slipped more than 5% over the past week and are flat for the year, though are up 39% over the past year, compared to the S&P 500’s
SPX,
46% gain in the past 52 weeks.
