Bezos in £24m share sell-off

JEFF Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, has unloaded shares in the giant US web retailer worth nearly £24m. The group, which recently posted its first net profit, said Bezos had sold 2.95m of his shares in the first week of February.

That exceeded his sales for all of last year in both total number of shares and dollar value. Some analysts said Amazon should explain the sell-off, the Wall Street Journal reported. 'I do think this is a big enough deviation from historical patterns that I'm surprised there wasn't some explanation given,' Lauren Levitan, an analyst at Robertson Stephens, was quoted as saying.

Chief executive Bezos, who previously owned 34% of Amazon, urged investors last year to avoid his company's volatile stock. Worth nearly £25bn in 1999, Amazon is currently valued by the market at less than £3.4bn.