Do big companies die young? Checking the facts Jeff Bezos

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As one of the most valuable brands in the world, it's hard to imagine a moment when Amazon could stop existing.

Jeff Bezos, the illustrious CEO and founder of the company, sees its extinction as a real possibility.

At a bare-hands meeting last Thursday in Seattle, the 54-year-old billionaire said: "Amazon is not too big to fail … In fact, I predict that someday Amazon will fail, Amazon will go bankrupt. "

"If you look at large companies, their lifespan tends to last more than 30 years, not more than a hundred years."

His radical claims, which can be heard in a recording obtained by CNBC, have certainly raised eyebrows. Is Bezos' bleak view of corporate mortality true?

The answer: it depends on how you look at it.

For starters, a number of companies in the current S & P 500 index are, in fact, centenarians. Wells Fargo was founded in 1852, Boeing in 1916 and Ford in 1903, among others.

However, if we look at the average tenure of S & P 500 member companies, Bezos' assertion has some validity. According to a report from Innosight, companies posted an average of 24 years in the index before falling. This is compared to the average of 33 years in 1964. Innosight also predicts that this number will decline further in the coming years in just 12 years to 2027 due to technological changes and the slowness with which businesses respond.

Although that does not mean that these companies "failed". According to the report, mergers and acquisitions account for the bulk of the S & P 500's business turnover. More than half of the withdrawals are the result of a merger or acquisition, while approximately one-third only have been abandoned because of a failure to maintain sufficient market capitalization or a less common bankruptcy.

A metric that Is However, in a report published in 2017, Credit Suisse determined that the average age of the S & P 500 group companies was less than 20 years depending on the age of the richest group in the world.

This represents a decline from the average age of 60 in the 1950s and is expected to decline even further in the near future, again due to rapid advances in technological and agile competition.

Yet, no statistic is necessarily a confirmation of the bankruptcy of an older company.

Richard Sylla, professor of economic history at the Stern School of Business at New York University, sees these figures not as evidence of the inevitable disappearance of older societies, but rather as a confirmation that more and more young companies are materializing and disrupting successfully.

"Of course, young companies outnumber the old ones," says Sylla. "Many of the biggest companies started between 1880 and 1920, but many others grew up after 1950 so that they are not quite centenarians. Again."

Regarding Sylla, Amazon users should not be too worried about the collapse of the booming platform that is dear to them.

"Bezos may be a great businessman, but seems to need a lesson in history."

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As one of the most valuable brands in the world, it's hard to imagine a moment when Amazon could stop existing.

Jeff Bezos, the illustrious CEO and founder of the company, sees its extinction as a real possibility.

At a bare-hands meeting last Thursday in Seattle, the 54-year-old billionaire said: "Amazon is not too big to fail … In fact, I predict that someday Amazon will fail, Amazon will go bankrupt. "

"If you look at large companies, their lifespan tends to last more than 30 years, not more than a hundred years."

His radical claims, which can be heard in a recording obtained by CNBC, have certainly raised eyebrows. Is Bezos' bleak view of corporate mortality true?

The answer: it depends on how you look at it.

For starters, a number of companies in the current S & P 500 index are, in fact, centenarians. Wells Fargo was founded in 1852, Boeing in 1916 and Ford in 1903, among others.

However, if we look at the average tenure of S & P 500 member companies, Bezos' assertion has some validity. According to a report from Innosight, companies posted an average of 24 years in the index before falling. This is compared to the average of 33 years in 1964. Innosight also predicts that this number will decline further in the coming years in just 12 years to 2027 due to technological changes and the slowness with which businesses respond.

Although that does not mean that these companies "failed". According to the report, mergers and acquisitions account for the bulk of the S & P 500's business turnover. More than half of the withdrawals are the result of a merger or acquisition, while approximately one-third only have been abandoned because of a failure to maintain sufficient market capitalization or a less common bankruptcy.

A metric that Is However, in a report published in 2017, Credit Suisse determined that the average age of the S & P 500 group companies was less than 20 years depending on the age of the richest group in the world.

This represents a decline from the average age of 60 in the 1950s and is expected to decline even further in the near future, again due to rapid advances in technological and agile competition.

Yet, no statistic is necessarily a confirmation of the bankruptcy of an older company.

Richard Sylla, professor of economic history at the Stern School of Business at New York University, sees these figures not as evidence of the inevitable disappearance of older societies, but rather as a confirmation that more and more young companies are materializing and disrupting successfully.

"Of course, young companies outnumber the old ones," says Sylla. "Many of the biggest companies started between 1880 and 1920, but many others grew up after 1950 so that they are not quite centenarians. Again."

Regarding Sylla, Amazon users should not be too worried about the collapse of the booming platform that is dear to them.

"Bezos may be a great businessman, but seems to need a lesson in history."