Word: amex
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...company seems increasingly wary about its forays beyond financial services, which in the past included illustrious but money-hungry start-ups like MTV. Amex may be preparing to recapitalize or sell off its ventures in magazine publishing, which it entered in 1968. The company has discussed selling part or all of its publications, which include New York Woman and L.A. Style, to an investment group controlled by buyout artist Henry Kravis...
...While Amex's financial troubles could largely be chalked up as honest mistakes or twists of fate, one episode revealed a darker side of the corporate culture. In 1989 Amex managers admitted conducting a public smear campaign against Edmond Safra, a wealthy financier who had sold a bank to American Express in 1983. After he departed to start a competing bank, American Express officials began spreading the word that Safra was caught up with money launderers and drug traffickers...
...Amex is now learning a humbling lesson. Earlier this year the company's weakened financial condition forced it to search for outside capital. Warren Buffett, the Omaha-based billionaire who serves as interim caretaker at Salomon Brothers, stepped in with a $300 million investment. The company has also recognized that its managers have to adjust to an economic slowdown that may last for the better part of the 1990s. Says Robinson: "Management has to be able to deal with good times and bad. It's easier in good times, but we can't always operate in an environment that...
Robinson strongly denies that the company ever set out to be all things to all people, to become a true financial supermarket. Amex has always seen itself as more of a niche player, an upscale specialist. But Robinson concedes that his financial empire might have overreached in its scope. "This has been a time of tremendous turmoil and change," he says. "We've had problems along the way, but we've gone and fixed them." Robinson may not have fully repaired Amex just yet, but the company seems to have finally come to grips with the likelihood that the current...
...them together for lunch. Linda, 38, the daughter of Freeman Gosden, who played Amos on the Amos and Andy show, was a deputy press secretary in Ronald Reagan's first presidential campaign. A quick study, she had risen to senior vice president for corporate affairs at Warner Amex Cable, a joint venture of Warner Communications and American Express, by the time she married Robinson in 1984. Two years later she launched Robinson Lake, which has since been acquired by the giant advertising firm Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt...