Amazon chief sells $1.4b in company stock

SAN FRANCISCO • Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos sold about US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) in the company's stock as part of a planned divestiture, a month after he said he spent about that amount annually on his space exploration company, Blue Origin.

Mr Bezos, one of the world's richest men, sold a million shares from Tuesday to Thursday, at prices ranging from about US$935 to US$950 per share, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday.

He still owns 79.9 million shares, or about 17 per cent of the company, compared with 83 million shares as of the end of 2015.

Amazon's growing e-commerce business and profitable cloud-computing division have propelled its founding CEO up the ranks of the world's wealthiest people. He is now third on the list, behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega Gaona, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

BLOOMBERG

Silk Road projects: China to let firms tap bourses

BEIJING • China will allow companies to tap domestic and overseas stock markets to finance projects related to the One Belt, One Road (Obor) initiative, said a senior securities regulator in comments seen yesterday.

Leaders from 28 countries will gather in Beijing on May 14 and 15 to discuss the plan, which involves investing billions of dollars in infrastructure.

China will develop direct financing to meet huge funding needs for the Obor programme, which has been relying on the country's policy banks and big commercial banks, said Dr Fang Xinghai, a vice-chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, in an article published in the central bank's China Finance magazine.

REUTERS