Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. (GeekWire File Photo)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos put an expiration date on his tenure as CEO, saying Wednesday morning that Andy Jassy will succeed him in the role on July 5.

“We chose that date because it’s sentimental for me, the day Amazon was incorporated in 1994, exactly 27 years ago,” Bezos said, addressing shareholders via webcast during his final annual meeting as CEO, held virtually due to the pandemic.

Bezos will become Amazon’s executive chairman following the transition, which was announced in February. Previously the company had said only that the change would take place in the third quarter of this year.

Jassy, the longtime leader of the Amazon Web Services cloud business, “is going to be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” Bezos said.

“He has the highest of high standards and I guarantee that Andy will never let the universe make us typical,” Bezos added. “He has the energy needed to keep alive in us what has made us special. While it won’t be easy, I do predict Andy will also find it satisfying and oftentimes fun.”

Incoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)

Bezos’ comments capped a meeting that reflected the full complexity of the company he founded and led for 27 years.

It started with a series of shareholder proposals seeking to hold the company accountable on issues including working conditions, privacy, artificial intelligence, greater transparency on gender and racial pay equity, and environmental impact.

One proposal sought to require that the board be led by “an independent director who has not previously served as an executive officer of the company,” effectively seeking to remove Bezos from that role.

Another asked the company to consider hourly associates as candidates for the board of directors. It was presented during the meeting on behalf of Oxfam America by Jennifer Bates, an Amazon hourly worker who was part of the unsuccessful effort to unionize the company’s Bessemer, Ala., fulfillment center.

“I know from my own experience, working at Amazon, that it does not listen to us workers,” Bates said. “I have tried on many occasions to raise concerns about workplace safety, scheduling and discipline. But managers are unavailable, don’t listen or simply dismiss me. I’m not alone.”

A majority of votes were cast against all of the outside shareholder resolutions, the company said at the meeting. Detailed results are typically released via a subsequent regulatory filing.

That announcement was followed by a presentation in which Amazon executives described the company’s efforts and progress on many of the same issues.

“While it may be easy for critics to paint in broad brushstrokes an image of a cold-hearted employer and negative working conditions, the reality is very different,” said Alicia Boler Davis, vice president of global customer fulfillment, named last year to Amazon’s senior leadership team.

Boler Davis noted that 94% of employees say they would recommend Amazon to a friend as a place to work.

Amazon’s record 2020 results of $386 billion in net sales and $23 billion in operating profits, as noted in a presentation by Brian Olsavsky, chief financial officer, were almost an afterthought.

In his remarks, Bezos addressed Amazon’s proposed $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM, announced Wednesday morning. He cited MGM’s “vast deep catalog of much beloved intellectual property” and said Amazon and MGM would “reimagine and develop that IP for the 21st century.”

A day before the meeting, Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust lawsuit targeting the company’s pricing policies for third-party sellers.

During a question-and-answer session at the end of the meeting, Bezos was asked what he says to critics “who think Amazon is too big or too powerful.” He gave what amounted to a preview of Amazon’s overall antitrust defense.

“I say we face intense competition from well-established companies, everywhere we do business, in every industry,” he said.

He went on to make comparisons to other industries:

If an industry is competitive, you should be able to find small, successful, fast-growing competitors. Think about mobile phone operating systems. Can you think of any successful, small, fast-growing mobile phone operating systems? Where are they? Name one. They do not exist.

In contrast, there are many successful, small, fast growing retailers that are doing incredibly well selling online. Some aren’t even that small. They’re multi-billion dollar companies.

And the IT industry too, of course, is thriving. We face competition from well-established companies like Google, Oracle and Microsoft, and from new, incredibly successful upstarts doing a great job and growing incredibly quickly, like Snowflake and Twilio.

And of course, we recognize that with success comes scrutiny, and we welcome it. Our goals are in line with goals of competition: low prices, wide selection, convenience, and ever-improving innovation and risk taking. We welcome the scrutiny.

“The retail industry is thriving,” Bezos said. “Consumers can shop at dozens of large national retailers, hundreds of regional retailers, hundreds of thousands of small retailers, both online and in store. It’s a very healthy industry, and it’s far from a winner-take-all situation, and we’re still a small fraction of retail.”

Many will dispute that, but it’s likely to be the final word on the issue from Bezos as CEO — and one of the biggest issues in Andy Jassy’s inbox come July 5.

Previously: Amazon’s next CEO, Andy Jassy, is a music-loving, wing-eating, hard-charging disciple of Jeff Bezos

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