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Retail-to-cloud giant Amazon’s new CEO faces five challenges

  • Regulators around the world are calling for more scrutiny of Amazon and other Big Tech companies’ business practices
  • Amazon has a lot of room to grow in e-commerce, but it is facing increased competition from big retailers like Walmart

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Long-time Amazon Web Services chief executive Andy Jassy discusses an initiative during the Amazon.com subsidiary’s re: Invent 2019 conference in Las Vegas. Jassy will take over as parent Amazon’s new chief later this year, when founder Jeff Bezos assumes the role of executive chairman. Photo: AP
Associated Press
In 1995, few could have imagined that the modest online bookstore built by Jeff Bezos would turn into a US$1.7 trillion behemoth that sells everything from diapers to sofas, produces films, owns a grocery chain and provides cloud computing services to businesses all over the globe.
Amazon.com has become all of that and more, and now it will be up to Andy Jassy to lead the company forward as its new chief executive.
On Tuesday, Amazon announced that Bezos would step aside this summer and assume the role of executive chairman so he can focus on new products and early initiatives being developed at Amazon.
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Although Bezos is expected to still play a big role at the company, it is Jassy who will inherit the many challenges born from Amazon’s meteoric rise. Here are some of them:

Entrepreneur Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com as an internet-based marketplace for books in 1995. The company, which Bezos founded the year before, has since expanded to become the world’s largest online retailer. Photo: TNS
Entrepreneur Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com as an internet-based marketplace for books in 1995. The company, which Bezos founded the year before, has since expanded to become the world’s largest online retailer. Photo: TNS
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Regulators around the world are examining Amazon’s business practices, specifically the way it looks at information from businesses that sell goods on its site and uses it to create its own Amazon-branded products. Bezos said at a hearing before the US Congress last summer that even though Amazon had a policy preventing employees from accessing seller data, he could not guarantee that the policy wasn’t being violated.

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