Google Stake To Pay Off Big For Amazon Chairman Bezos
Amazon.com Inc. Chairman Jeff Bezos, ranked by Forbes magazine in February as the world's 82nd-richest person, stands to move up a notch or two when Google Inc. holds its initial public offering later this year.
Google, operator of the most widely used search engine on the Internet, disclosed in a securities filing that Bezos was one of the company's first five outside investors. The group, which also includes former Amazon.com executive Ram Shriram, paid 6 cents a share for Google stock in late 1998, according to the documents.
Bezos, 40, already has built a personal fortune of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes, by turning Seattle-based Amazon.com into the world's largest online retailer. He is set to reap further rewards as Google prepares to raise $2.7 billion through its IPO, a record first-time stock sale for an Internet company.
"You have to give Bezos credit for vision," said Benjamin Horowitz, chief executive of Opsware Inc., a software provider he set up with Marc Andreessen, one of the co-founders of Netscape Communications Corp. "Who would have thought in 1998 that the next big thing would be Internet search?"
Google officials declined comment and Amazon.com officials declined to make Bezos available for an interview.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google sold 15.36 million Series A shares, for a total of $960,000, shortly after the company incorporated in September 1998, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 29. Bezos was cited in an exhibit to the SEC filing as one of five investors who owned the Series A preferred stock. The document doesn't disclose the number of shares Bezos holds.
Based on data in the filing, Google has a current stock market value of as much as $25 billion, or about $91 a share, according to estimates provided to The Wall Street Journal by Jack Ciesielski, publisher of Analyst's Accounting Observer.
That would represent a 1,500-fold return for the Series A investors, who will be able to convert their preferred stock into an equivalent number of common shares, according to the SEC filing.
Amazon.com Inc. Chairman Jeff Bezos, ranked by Forbes magazine in February as the world's 82nd-richest person, stands to move up a notch or two when Google Inc. holds its initial public offering later this year.
Google, operator of the most widely used search engine on the Internet, disclosed in a securities filing that Bezos was one of the company's first five outside investors. The group, which also includes former Amazon.com executive Ram Shriram, paid 6 cents a share for Google stock in late 1998, according to the documents.
Bezos, 40, already has built a personal fortune of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes, by turning Seattle-based Amazon.com into the world's largest online retailer. He is set to reap further rewards as Google prepares to raise $2.7 billion through its IPO, a record first-time stock sale for an Internet company.
"You have to give Bezos credit for vision," said Benjamin Horowitz, chief executive of Opsware Inc., a software provider he set up with Marc Andreessen, one of the co-founders of Netscape Communications Corp. "Who would have thought in 1998 that the next big thing would be Internet search?"
Google officials declined comment and Amazon.com officials declined to make Bezos available for an interview.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google sold 15.36 million Series A shares, for a total of $960,000, shortly after the company incorporated in September 1998, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 29. Bezos was cited in an exhibit to the SEC filing as one of five investors who owned the Series A preferred stock. The document doesn't disclose the number of shares Bezos holds.
Based on data in the filing, Google has a current stock market value of as much as $25 billion, or about $91 a share, according to estimates provided to The Wall Street Journal by Jack Ciesielski, publisher of Analyst's Accounting Observer.
That would represent a 1,500-fold return for the Series A investors, who will be able to convert their preferred stock into an equivalent number of common shares, according to the SEC filing.
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