Word: clark
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...prime mover of the diversification is Chairman Howard L. Clark, 53, a lawyer and accountant who joined Amexco in 1945 as assistant to the president and became chief executive in 1960. The company then was taking in revenue of $75 million annually, primarily from arranging tours and selling traveler's checks, but these activities contributed little directly to net income. Most of that came from investing the "float" of money paid for traveler's checks that had not been cashed. Clark saw that the traveler's-check business, in effect, was a license to print money. Investing...
...tour business, Clark admits, still earns only enough to pay for the upkeep of the American Express offices abroad. But it has won customers for such other ventures as the teaching of foreign languages and the publication of Travel & Camera magazine, which Amexco established by purchasing and redesigning U.S. Camera and Travel magazine. In June, the company began a computerized service that can provide almost instantaneous reservations at some 250,000 hotel and motel rooms between Boston and Honolulu...
Unlike some executives who take a paternal pride in diversification moves. Clark has not hesitated to shed businesses as well-including some that made money but not as much as he would have liked. Amexco acquired the Uni-card credit business in 1965 and expanded it, but sold it last January-for a $16.6 million profit. Early last month, it agreed to sell its freight operations to Pacific Intermountain Express...
...other hand, Clark has been willing to suffer through initial disappointment with a business that gives signs of eventually becoming a major profit maker. He nursed the American Express credit-card operation through years of losses while Amexco was spending heavily to promote it. The company now has 3,000,000 cardholders, who charge purchases of $1.3 billion a year, and is by far the biggest factor in the field, though it is being increasingly challenged by the many cards issued by banks...
...growth has created an unusual demand for young executives, and Clark has developed an equally unusual method of training them. Every year Amexco assigns six or seven new graduate-school alumni to be management consultants within Amexco. Each one studies a particular new business opportunity or competitive threat and develops a program to deal with it. By the time they are through, says Clark, "they know the company inside out," and are usually enthused about it and ready for major operating responsibility. Meanwhile they save American Express a consultant...