One of the most powerful women in the world is teaming up with one of the richest women in the world—Melinda Gates and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mackenzie-bezos/#efc49bc12948">MacKenzie Bezos</a>, respectively—to host a competition with one goal in mind: gender equality.



Gates and Bezos announced the competition, called the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge, through Pivotal Ventures, Gates’ investment and incubation company. The challenge will be managed by Lever For Change, a MacArthur Foundation affiliate, and will grant $30 million to the organizations (or the coalitions of organizations) with the best ideas for helping to expand women’s power and influence in the United States by 2030.



“Closing the gap on gender equality will benefit everyone. History keeps teaching us that when a diversity of voices is represented in decisions, the outcome is better for all,” MacKenzie Bezos said in a statement Tuesday. “I’m excited that the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge will focus energy and innovation on this vital catalyst for positive change.” 



“The entrenched inequalities that divide America—race, gender, class—will not go away without systems-wide change,” added Melinda Gates in a statement of her own. “This challenge is seeking bold ideas to dismantle the status quo and expand power and influence for women of all backgrounds.”&nbsp;



While Melinda Gates has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2015/11/23/the-first-woman-of-women-how-melinda-gates-became-the-worlds-most-powerful-advocate-for-women-and-girls/#7eae6d1a4414">long been an outspoken advocate</a> for women’s health and gender equality, Bezos has been quieter with her philanthropy and influence. Since finalizing her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos last year, Bezos has indicated her philanthropic intentions by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2019/05/28/mackenzie-bezos-will-donate-half-her-fortune-to-giving-pledge/#e8b7ffc31d89">signing the Giving Pledge</a> (thereby committing at least half of her now-$51 billion fortune to charity) and joining the board of Blue Meridian, an organization dedicated to helping children and families in poverty. Her contribution to the Equality Can’t Wait initiative marks her biggest public gift to date.



A spokesperson for Lever for Change said that the competition had been in the works for the past six months, and that the timing of its announcement—just weeks after massive protests against systemic racial inequities started spreading across the nation—is not meant to be a reaction to the current reality, but a continuation of serious conversations.



Broadly, the challenge will look for ideas that help dismantle barriers that hold women back (including but not limited to sexual harassment and discrimination, racial inequity, and inadequate federal policies around caregiving); fast-track female participation in sectors like technology, government and entrepreneurship; and change outdated systems and beliefs around gender. Specifically,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.equalitycantwaitchallenge.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to the challenge’s website</a>, successful proposals should create real, measurable change for women in at least one of the following areas: wages and wealth, unpaid care, share of leadership roles, content creation (in other words, increasing the percentage of cultural and intellectual content created by women), and public perception.



&#8220;When I taught my first course on women in the U.S. economy back in 1985, a female full-time, year-round worker made 65 cents for every dollar earned by a man. In 2018, she earned 82 cents. That’s a raise of less than a penny a year,” noted Cecilia Conrad, the CEO of Lever for Change. She’s hopeful that the Equality Can’t Wait competition will accelerate parity in wages and societal treatment.



To participate in the challenge, organizations must register online by September 1, 2020; fuller applications are due by September 22. Finalists will be announced in early 2021, and winners will be chosen next summer. The $30 million in prize money will be divided among the two most compelling ideas (each will receive a minimum of $10 million) and the remaining finalists.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/">Maggie McGrath</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbeswomen">ForbesWomen</a>

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MacKenzie Bezos And Melinda Gates Team Up On $30 Million Gender Equity Contest

MacKenzie Bezos is an author, an early Amazon employee, a billionaire — and isn’t talking.



MacKenzie Bezos was not fussy, which was helpful, as there
was no time for fussiness at Amazon headquarters in early 1996. She shared her
office with a junior employee in a space that doubled as the company kitchen.
For 12 hours a day, as workers squeezed by to use the microwave, she presided
over the accounting. At night she headed to the warehouse to pack orders. She
“was a huge contributor,” says Mike Hanlon, Amazon’s seventh employee. “She
really is a talented person in a way that I think gets lost when you’re the
billionaire’s wife.”



The mystery around MacKenzie, 49, seems carefully
cultivated. She largely slipped into anonymity after Amazon’s early years and
has granted no interviews since January 2019, when her split from husband Jeff
became public. 



The couple finalized their divorce in July, with MacKenzie getting 25% of his Amazon stock. That stake is currently worth $36.1 billion, enough to put her 15th on 2019’s Forbes 400. “She should have gotten 50% of the company,” says Nick Hanauer, one of Amazon’s first investors. “MacKenzie was an equal partner to Jeff in the early days.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.forbeswomanafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/FO103119_067-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-41575"/><figcaption>NEW YORK CITY, NY &#8211; NOVEMBER 5: Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos attend The Aspen Institute 26th Annual Awards Dinner at The Plaza Hotel on November 5, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by MAX RAPP/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure>



In keeping with character, MacKenzie wouldn’t talk for this
story. To shed some light on her, we spent weeks contacting more than 100
friends and former classmates and coworkers; even that yielded only a hazy
picture, one of an intensely private but talented woman who has, quietly,
excelled at every stage of her life.



MacKenzie grew up in San Francisco, a middle child with two
siblings. At six, she wrote a 142-page book called The Book Worm. Her parents,
a homemaker and a financial planner, sent her to Hotchkiss, the Connecticut
boarding school, where she graduated a year early. She studied at Cambridge,
then Princeton, where she majored in English; Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni
Morrison was her thesis advisor. “She was generally a very poised and a quiet
and brilliant presence,” says Jeff Nunokawa, one of her English professors. 



After graduating, she took a job at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, where she began dating Jeff Bezos, who left to found Amazon in 1994. From the outset, MacKenzie was heavily involved. “No one really had job titles . . . so she did just about everything,” says Tod Nelson, another early employee.



READ MORE: <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/05/28/mackenzie-bezos-will-donate-half-her-fortune-to-charity/">MacKenzie Bezos Will Donate Half Her Fortune To Charity</a>



MacKenzie pulled back around the time Amazon went public, in
1997, to focus on fiction writing. She kept a low profile until 2005, when
HarperCollins published her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright.



Morrison deemed it “a rarity.” MacKenzie followed it in 2013 with Traps. The more recent chapters of her life are largely unknown. In 2018 she and Jeff committed $2 billion to fight homelessness and support nonprofit preschools. In May, as their divorce neared completion, she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least half her wealth. True to form, she hasn’t said a word about where those billions will go.



&#8211;Noah Kirsch, Forbes Staff, Media

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New Billionaire Ghost Writer: The Mystery Around MacKenzie Bezos

On Wednesday evening, hours after the stock markets had closed, Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos filed paperwork with the Securities Exchange Commission which showed he had sold $1.8 billion worth of Amazon shares over the final three days of July. After taxes, he will net about $1.4 billion.



Bezos sold slightly more than 900,000 shares of Amazon between July 29 and July 31, when the e-commerce behometh’s stock price was around $1,900 a share. His net worth is now $115 billion, using Wednesday&#8217;s closing share price.



The last time that Bezos sold Amazon shares was in October 2018. 



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The new filings also show that Bezos has given his ex-wife MacKenzie 25% of his Amazon stake, or 19.7 million shares. In April, as the couple announced they were getting divorced, Mackenzie tweeted that Jeff would keep 75% of his Amazon stake. 



Jeff Bezos will continue to exercise voting control over the 19.7 million shares of Amazon he transferred to his wife, according to an SEC filing in April. Her Amazon shares are worth nearly $36.8 billion, making her the third richest woman in the world.  



Jeff Bezos has sold large chunks of Amazon stock before, but this appears to be the largest sale, measured in dollars. Bezos sold Amazon stock worth $1.7 billion in 2017 in two separate transactions in May and November of that year. It was reported that Bezos planned to sell $1 billion worth of stock every year to fund Blue Origin, his space exploration company. 



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A spokesman for Amazon has not responded to requests for comment regarding the purpose of Bezos’ latest stock sale.



Bezos has done little in terms of philanthropy so far. In September 2018, he announced the Bezos Day One Fund, a $2 billion pledge for two causes: helping homeless families find shelter and creating Montessori-inspired preschools in the U.S. 



-Angel Au-Yeung; Forbes



READ MORE: 



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Jeff Bezos Sells About $1.8 Billion Worth Of Amazon Shares In Three Days

One of the world&#8217;s ultimate taste-makers, Bernard Arnault entered an ultra-rarefied club this week. As of Thursday June 20, he was worth just over $100 billion, making him one of three people in the world with 12-figure fortunes. 



He joins Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, worth an estimated $157.5 billion, and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, worth an estimated $103.1 billion. Bezos, who first passed $100 billion in 2017, will soon give a slice of that fortune away. 



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He and his wife, MacKenzie, are in the process of finalizing their divorce. The couple announced in early April that she will receive a quarter of his Amazon stake, currently valued at more than $37 billion. Gates reached $100 billion in April, thanks to strong earnings from Microsoft.



Arnault’s luxury goods group, LVMH Moët Hennessy–Louis Vuitton, has been having a great year. In April, it announced record first quarter sales and profits on top of a strong 2018. Its shares are up more than 40% so far in 2019, boosting Arnault’s fortune by more than $20 billion.With his family, he owns 46% of LVMH and serves as both its chairman and CEO.



<figure><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fe.infogram.com%2F_%2FcyePeUtIgfbGOdwz1CPc%3Fsrc%3Dembed&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram.com%2F1pmr7xxm5jyg3mh39xvvl3xn2wtzry9mrgq&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram-thumbs-1024.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbc5d4970-ab4d-4903-8f35-e47d52abb137.jpg&amp;key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=infogram"></iframe></figure>



The growth comes as high-end buyers around the world continue to pick up luxury goods and spirits, despite fears that demand, particularly in China, would slow down. Thirty-five years after Arnault first got into luxury goods with the purchase of Christian Dior, he continues to refresh LVMH by finding ways to appeal to a new generation of customers while retaining the traditional values and high quality that have defined its brands. 



That includes innovative partnerships like the two with Rihanna — Fenty Beauty and Fenty fashion house — as well as recent deals such as the acquisition of Belmond, which operates luxury hotels, trains and even safaris.



“People do not understand that success stems from the cohabitation of two contradictory spirits: the artist&#8217;s vision and the logic of worldwide marketing,&#8221; Arnault told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in 1997. &#8220;It&#8217;s a very complex process.&#8221;



Forbes first wrote about Arnault in 1991 when he was worth $200 million. He has since been featured several times and has appeared on our cover. He made his debut in our Billionaires ranks in 1997. Some readers may know his story well but it’s one worth retelling.



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A native of France&#8217;s cold, flat industrial north, Arnault was a star student at France&#8217;s prestigious Ecole Polytechnique. The son of a construction tycoon, Arnault spent three years in the U.S. in the early 1980s trying to establish a branch of his family’s real estate business, Ferinel, as a developer of Florida vacation properties. 



After three years he returned home. But he learned a valued lesson in America, according to a 1997 Forbes <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0602/5911080a.html" target="_blank">profile on Arnault</a>. Before leaving, he sold his Mediterranean-style home facing Long Island Sound in New Rochelle, N.Y. to American tycoon John Kluge, owner of the mansion next door. Kluge tore it down because it blocked his view.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;It was just incredible!&#8221; Arnault told Forbes. &#8220;It was a very nice place, but two days after he bought it, he tore my house down! It&#8217;s so very&#8230;American.&#8221; Lesson learned: &#8220;When something has to be done,&#8221; says Arnault, &#8220;do it! In France we are full of good ideas, but we rarely put them into practice.&#8221;</blockquote>



He returned back to France ready to make some moves. In 1984, Arnault put up $15 million of his family’s money to rescue bankrupt textile empire Boussac (Lazard put up the rest). Among Boussac’s mixed bag assets was money-losing fashion house Christian Dior. 



That became the first of many Arnault acquisitions and the cornerstone of his massive luxury goods empire. Over the years, LVMH snapped up such brands such as Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Sephora. Today LVMH has nearly $53 billion in sales from 70 brands and 4,590 retail stores.   



-Luisa Kroll; Forbes Staff

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Luxury Goods Titan Bernard Arnault Becomes World’s Third $100 Billion Man

MacKenzie Bezos is the latest billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge and commit at least half of her $35 billion fortune to charity. Bezos joins&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/#36edfd833e06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-branson/#36de51286ff5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Richard Branson</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/robert-f-smith/#5e2f42da2236" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Robert F. Smith</a>&nbsp;on the list of donors to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett&#8217;s initiative.



In a letter published by&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://givingpledge.org/Pledger.aspx?id=393" target="_blank">Giving Pledge, Bezos</a>&nbsp;writes of having “a disproportionate amount of money to share” and credits “an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand” for her wealth.



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Bezos’ signature, alongside hedge fund billionaires&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-harding/#128137bd574e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Harding</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/paul-tudor-jones-ii/#cf738ae719c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Paul Tudor Jones</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/brian-armstrong/#ba0a5735077c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Brian Armstrong</a>&nbsp;chief executive of cryptocurrency company Coinbase, and WhatsApp’s co-founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/brian-acton/#4ff0f3645cfc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Brian Acton</a>, brings the total signatories to more than 200 people.



The Giving Pledge began in August 2010 when 40 of America’s wealthiest individuals made a commitment to give more than half of their wealth away. The scheme is described as an “open invitation for billionaires &#8230; to publicly dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy”.



Although MacKenzie Bezos doesn’t list any particular causes she writes, “My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”



Who is MacKenzie Bezos?



MacKenzie Bezos will become the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/04/04/mackenzie-bezos-to-receive-more-than-35-billion-of-amazon-stock-will-be-worlds-third-richest-woman/#531bed4c1001" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">world’s third richest woman</a>&nbsp;later this year after announcing&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2019/01/10/fortunes-and-farewells-from-bezos-to-disney-a-guide-to-the-biggest-nastiest-and-weirdest-billionaire-divorces/#53bc7cf0540a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the terms of the divorce settlement</a>&nbsp;with her husband and Amazon founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#681c86bc1b23" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jeff Bezos</a>.



Although amicable, the settlement is biggest of all time with MacKenzie receiving 4% of Amazon stock, worth more than $35 billion on April 4 2019.



With Amazon&#8217;s current market cap of $897.66 billion, MacKenzie&#8217;s 4% stake is now worth $35.9 billion.



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MacKenzie is also a successful novelist, described by author Toni Morrison as &#8220;one of the best students I&#8217;ve ever had.&#8221; She met Jeff Bezos while both were working at hedge fund D.E. Shaw in New York and they married in 1993. MacKenzie Bezos confirmed her divorce on twitter, stating she was, “Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff.”



L&#8217;Oreal heiress&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/francoise-bettencourt-meyers/#2d000f042b06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Francoise Bettencourt Meyers</a>&nbsp;is the world’s richest woman with a net worth of $53.6 billion, while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/alice-walton/#52f0504b4eb2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alice Walton</a>&nbsp;of Walmart fame is the only other woman ahead of MacKenzie with a $47.1 billion fortune.



-David Dawkins;Forbes Staff

Axel Springer award ceremony

MacKenzie Bezos Will Donate Half Her Fortune To Charity

Jeff Bezos announced on Thursday that he will give a 4% stake in Amazon—currently worth more than $35 billion—to his wife, MacKenzie, as part of their pending divorce, making it by far the largest divorce settlement in history. In January, soon after the couple announced their separation, Forbes assembled a list of the largest, strangest and most notable billionaire disunions on record—at least where we could follow the money. In some cases, like the split between Google’s Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, we don’t know the size of the settlement because divorce filings were sealed. 



Below are five of the largest settlements, in descending order.



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1) Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos &#8211; At least $35 billion.



The couple met while both were working at hedge fund D.E. Shaw in New York. After they moved to Seattle, MacKenzie helped Jeff get Amazon off the ground. On April 4, they announced the terms of their divorce, which will likely become official over the summer: she will receive about 4% of Amazon’s outstanding shares—now worth over $35 billion. Jeff will hold on to all of rocket company Blue Origin and The Washington Post. Once the divorce is finalized, MacKenzie will likely be the world’s third-richest woman.



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2) Bill and Sue Gross &#8211; $1.3 billion



The Grosses’ messy split minted a new billionaire and dragged down another. Sue filed for divorce in 2016 from her husband, the founder of asset-manager Pimco, and she walked away a year later with a $1.3 billion fortune. That haul included a $36 million Laguna Beach house and “Le Repos,” a contested 1932 Picasso painting that she later sold for $35 million. While Bill originally tried to hang on to one of their three pet cats, Sue eventually got custody of all of them. Bill lost his spot on The Forbes 400 in 2018 following 14 consecutive years on the list. Both now run their own charitable vehicles.



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3) Steve and Elaine Wynn &#8211; $850 million



The cofounders of casino giant Wynn Resorts divorced (for the second time) in 2010. That settlement dictated that Elaine, a Wynn Resorts board member since 2002, receive 11 million shares, then worth an estimated $795 million. Steve also sold around $114 million in stock that year—some, if not all, went to Elaine as part of the deal. She then sued Wynn Resorts in 2012 to sell part of her 9% stake and was kicked off the board three years later amid an ugly proxy battle. 



 After Steve stepped down as CEO and chairman in February 2018 amid sexual harassment allegations that he has denied, he sold all his shares. Elaine, now worth $2 billion, is Wynn Resorts’ largest shareholder.



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4) Harold Hamm and Sue Ann Arnall &#8211; $975 million



After three years of bitter court proceedings, oil tycoon Harold in 2015 tried to finally end his 26-year marriage with Sue Ann (no prenup) by writing her a check in the amount of $974,790,317.77 from his Morgan Stanley account. She deposited it, but then changed her mind, decided she wanted more and filed an appeal seeking a bigger share of the $13.7 billion fortune tied to Hamm’s 75% ownership in publicly traded Continental Resources. In April 2015 the Oklahoma Supreme Court ended the saga, granting Harold’s motion to dismiss her appeal, reasoning from precedent that Sue Ann had agreed to the settlement by signing and depositing the check. Sue Ann subsequently funded a political action committee that succeeded in its effort to unseat the judge who presided over the divorce.



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5) Roy E. and Patricia Disney &#8211; $600 million



Roy and his wife filed for divorce in 2007 at the ages of 77 and 72, respectively, after 52 years of marriage. Roy, a nephew of Walt Disney, was worth approximately $1.3 billion at the time. Previously a Forbes 400 mainstay, he lost nearly half of his fortune in the split and was dropped from the list. In 2008, he married writer and producer Leslie DeMeuse. He died a year later; Patricia followed in 2012. A family foundation with assets of $122 million (as of 2016) bearing both of their names supports environmental and economic causes.



&#8211;Compiled by Madeline Berg, Deniz Cam, Kathleen Chaykowski, Lauren Debter, Kerry A. Dolan, Alex Fang, Luisa Kroll, Chloe Sorvino and Jennifer Wang.



&#8211; Noah Kirsch; Forbes Staff

Bezos By Far: The 5 Largest Billionaire Divorces In History

Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, announced on Thursday that he will transfer roughly 4% of the company’s stock to his wife, MacKenzie, most likely by early July. The couple are in the process of finalizing their divorce.



Those shares are worth more than $35 billion as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. That would make MacKenzie the third-richest woman in the world, behind L’Oréal’s Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, who is worth an estimated $52.9 billion, and Walmart’s Alice Walton, who is worth $45 billion. She would rank as the planet’s 26th-richest person, ahead of Nike’s Phil Knight.



Jeff Bezos will remain the world’s richest person, with a net worth above $110 billion, per early Thursday afternoon stock prices. Bill Gates is the world’s second-wealthiest individual, boasting an estimated $99.5 billion fortune.



While still pending, the Bezos divorce settlement will likely be&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2019/01/10/fortunes-and-farewells-from-bezos-to-disney-a-guide-to-the-biggest-nastiest-and-weirdest-billionaire-divorces/#24ad167e540a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the largest in world history</a>. Other divorces of the ultrarich include Steve and Elaine Wynn (she received an estimated $850 million settlement), as well as Bill and Susan Gross (she received a $1.3 billion settlement).



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1113851402965487616" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>&nbsp;posted to his Twitter account, Jeff Bezos said, “In all our work together, MacKenzie’s abilities have been on full display. She has been an extraordinary partner, ally, and mother.”



MacKenzie posted a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/mackenziebezos/status/1113851260040503296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>&nbsp;of her own, saying, “Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff from each other. … Happy to be giving him all my interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin, and 75% of our Amazon stock plus voting control of my shares to support his continued contributions with the teams of these incredible companies.”



The couple filed a petition for divorce on April 4, and they expect an official decree to be issued in early July, they said in an SEC filing that outlined the transfer of shares. The filing noted that Jeff Bezos will continue to exercise voting control over MacKenzie’s shares, unless she sells them on the open market or gives them to qualifying nonprofits.



If MacKenzie transfers shares, the recipient of the stock must sign a similar agreement granting Jeff Bezos voting control.



The couple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2019/01/09/jeff-bezos-worlds-richest-person-announces-divorce-after-25-years-of-marriage/#6b8f3f17db7d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;their divorce in January, following 25 years of marriage. Their separation stirred a tabloid frenzy, as intimate text messages between Bezos and his romantic partner, Lauren Sanchez, a TV anchor, were leaked by the&nbsp;National Enquirer.



Bezos subsequently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/02/07/jeff-bezos-details-blackmail-attempt-by-publisher-of-national-enquirer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published</a>&nbsp;an open letter accusing American Media Inc., which owns the&nbsp;National Inquirer, of extortion and blackmail. AMI has denied wrongdoing.



Bezos also hired a team of investigators to determine who accessed his private messages. His consultant Gavin De Becker ultimately&nbsp;accused&nbsp;the Saudi Arabian government of illicitly gaining access to Bezos’ cellphone. Saudi officials have denied that allegation.



-Angel Au-Yeung; Forbes Staff



-Noah Kirsch; Forbes Staff

Tag: MacKenzie Bezos