Could Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Pull A Bob Iger And Return As CEO? One Investor Predicts It Will Happen In 2023

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Given the steep downturn in Amazon’s stock price and stiff operational challenges ahead, could Jeff Bezos pull a Bob Iger and return as the company’s CEO?

One investor is predicting that scenario will play out in 2023. A comeback by Bezos, who handed the reins to longtime company vet Andy Jassy in mid-2021 and became executive chairman, is one of 10 financial market predictions for this year by Michael Batnick, managing partner at Ritholtz Wealth Management.

Batnick pins his prediction mainly on the company’s depressed stock price. While 2022 was a brutal year for many tech stocks, and the overall market’s worst since 2008, Amazon’s 50% plunge was the company’s biggest since 2000, the year the dotcom bubble burst. (In two market session thus far in 2023, shares have risen 1%.) The stock losses shaved off a remarkable $840 billion in market value in just a year’s time, along with some $100 billion from the personal net worth of Bezos. “The company he spent his life building is struggling big-time,” Batnick told CNBC in an interview Wednesday.

A CEO reversing an earlier departure is “not without precedent,” the investor added. At Disney, “Bob Iger just did this. [Starbucks boss] Howard Schultz has pulled this multiple times.” Under Jassy, Amazon’s financial glide path during Covid gave way to turbulence as inflation and a host of other economic factors conspired against it.