Reference no: EM132965696 , Length: word count:1000

ACCT 6013 Corporate Governance for Managers - Southern Cross University

Assignment 1

Case study: Amazon: president, CEO, and chair

Amazon was started by Jeff Bezos as an online bookseller from his home in Seattle, Washington State. He had previously been vice-president of a Wall Street firm. In July 1994, Bezos incorporated a company in the US state of Washington called Cadabra (from the conjuring phrase ‘abracadabra'). A year later, he incorporated Amazon in the state of Delaware, a state with friendlier companies legislation and company courts. The Cadabra business was backed into the new company.

Amazon then diversified with CDs, videos, and software, adding the downloading and streaming of film, and Kindles and other e-readers when the technology became available. But Amazon's great strength lay in its mastery of cloud computing, allowing it to offer infrastructure worldwide with merchandising platforms for its own and other companies' products. Amazon provides several websites in the USA, and others in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Holland, India, Japan, and elsewhere. Amazon is the largest retailer in the United States, by market capitalization, having over-taken Walmart since 2015.

Corporate governance at Amazon
Amazon's website has a lot of corporate governance information on its investor relations home page including:
• financial reports;
• SEC filings;
• shareholder letters (including the founder's comments on corporate philosophy and policies);
• press releases on investor matters;
• shareholder webcasts and a webcast archive.
• The founder and other owners connected with him maintain their control over the company with a class of shares that have dominant voting rights.
• The board has twelve members and three standing committees:
• audit committee;
• nominating and corporate governance committees;
• leadership development and compensation committee.

On Wednesday 26 May 2021 Jeff Bezos has announced at the company's annual shareholder meeting that he will formally step down as Amazon CEO on July 5 2021. Andy Jassy, Amazon's cloud-computing boss, will take over Bezos' role.
Discussion questions:
1. Jeff Bezos has the title of president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board. Some of the members of his board also carry multiple titles such as chairman, president, and CEO. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such centralization of authority and power in one person.
2. Does Amazon have a well-balanced and effective board? Provide your evaluation and comments.

Attachment:- Corporate Governance for Managers.rar