Troy Wolverton

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When the CEO Is the Company

Troy Wolverton

What is Amazon.com (AMZN Quote) without Jeff Bezos?

That's what some investors may be wondering following reports that the company's chairman and chief executive officer survived a helicopter crash in Texas last week. Although Bezos, 39, presumably has many years of service to the company left in him, the frightening incident highlights his importance to the company, and Amazon's lack of an acknowledged No. 2.

"It would probably be more disruptive than you would imagine," said Jeff Matthews, general partner of Greenwich, Conn.-based investment firm Ram Partners, and a contributor to the Street Insight Web site. "It's a great yellow flag for them, to make sure they do have a good guy or woman in place to fill his shoes."

(Matthews has no position in Amazon.)

Bezos, who founded Amazon out of his garage in 1994, is, of course, more than just the head of the company. To a larger extent than most CEOs, he's the public face of Amazon and the company's guiding visionary.

In that way, he's more akin to Martha Stewart than to Meg Whitman, who serves as CEO of the other dot-com titan, eBay (EBAY Quote). Although Amazon's brand is not wrapped up in Bezos' name, like Stewart's, he is the person that investors and customers associate with Amazon.

"I think there's lot less of the company tied to [Whitman's] cult of personality than at Amazon," Matthews said.

That wouldn't be so bad if Bezos had a clear-cut successor who could assume his place in an emergency. But the company has seen the departure of several senior executives over the last year.

Warren Jenson, the company's respected chief financial officer, left the company a year ago to become CFO of Electronic Arts (ERTS Quote).

Mark Britto, the company's senior vice president of worldwide sales, services and business development, left last June to become CEO of Keen.com, while David Risher, who served as senior vice president of marketing and product development, left in March 2002.

Although Amazon quickly replaced Jenson, the company has largely redistributed Risher and Britto's duties to other executives.

Meanwhile, the company has never replaced Joseph Galli, who served as its first president and chief operating officer, and essentially the company's second-in-command. Instead, Amazon named Bezos its president after Galli left.

"There's no question about who's leading the company," said Jeff Fieler, who covers the company for Bear Stearns. He added, jokingly, "It would probably be a bigger negative for Amazon [if something happened to Bezos], than for Bear if something happened to me."

A company spokesman declined to talk about Bezos' accident or the company's contingency plans if something were to happen to him.

Despite Bezos' importance to Amazon, some analysts warn not to get too worried about what might happen to him. Noting Bezos' age, Fieler said that the chances something might incapacitate him anytime soon are pretty "remote."

Meanwhile, Amazon is no longer just a start-up operation, Fieler said.

"Amazon is big enough and has enough systems in place that it's more than one man," he said. Bear Stearns has not recently done banking for Amazon.

And Amazon's management team may be deeper than it appears at first glance, argued Shawn Milne, an analyst with SoundView Technology Group. Tom Szkutak, who joined Amazon as its new CFO in October, formerly served as CFO of GE's lighting division, Milne noted.

Diego Piacentini, the company's senior vice president of worldwide retail and marketing, formerly headed Apple Computer's overseas operations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

"They have a very strong management team, with good breadth," Milne said. (SoundView does not have any investment banking business with Amazon.)

But even Milne acknowledges that losing Bezos could be a blow to Amazon.

"If there is an issue with Jeff, it's the sentiment of him driving the ship, that it's his vision," Milne said. "If he was gone, it would call into question the vision."