Andy Jassy is off to a propitious start as boss of Amazon

IT WASN’T a bad start for Andy Jassy, who on July 5th succeeded Jeff Bezos as boss of Amazon. The next day the share price of the digital empire, which Mr Bezos had led since founding it as an online bookshop in 1994, rose by nearly 5%, and its market value jumped above $1.8trn. Mr Jassy’s undoubted managerial virtues probably weren’t the reason. The likelier cause is the Pentagon’s decision to bin a cloud-computing deal with Microsoft. The $10bn contract, which Amazon had challenged, arguing it was unfairly awarded to its rival, is instead to be shared by the two tech giants and possibly others. Still, if the new CEO is to maintain Mr Bezos’s sterling record, a little luck won’t hurt.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The Jassy age”