Word: optima
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Many are offshoots of Optima, the company's first credit card. (The venerable green and gold cards are not credit cards that can carry over a balance but charge cards that require payment-in-full each month.) Want to earn discounts on golf lessons or a new set of clubs, for example? The American Express Golf Card, an Optima card issued with Callaway Golf, was designed for that. Or how about dollars off hotel rooms or a chance to rack up frequent-flyer miles? Among other programs, American Express offers Hilton Optima and Delta AirLines Skymiles cards...
...consolation in the fact that at least a few borrow-and-spenders seem to be putting off the day of reckoning. Meredith Richman, 28, a developer of computer programs in New York City, is one of them. Richman "maxed out" the $6,000 credit line on her American Express Optima card this year by charging a $3,000 income tax payment along with her rent and a $1,700 computer. "It doesn't matter, though," says Richman, who has rolled over unpaid balances to new cards three times this year. "I can always get other cards...
...into revolving credit is a gutsy move for American Express, whose recent ads have featured Jerry Seinfeld musing adenoidally about what the company has referred to in less lighthearted moments as the "evils of debt trap." AmEx's own maiden voyage into revolving credit -- with the launch of the Optima card in 1987 -- resulted in a plastic meltdown. The program quickly racked up $1.5 billion in unpaid charges, a figure twice the industry average, according to Robert McKinley, president of RAM Research Corp. Since March 1992, when the loss rate peaked at 12%, AmEx has wrestled bum credit to less...
...many things go wrong for American Express in such a short time? Analysts who follow the company say much of the same hubris and lack of managerial controls responsible for the Optima scandal may also be the cause of past disasters. The company's failed foray into cable TV, critics say, was an example of an unwise management decision to find synergy where none existed. The company may have lost sight of its limits, says analyst Daniel Murray of Argus Research. "If you invented your own private money, you might be a little arrogant...
...Optima affair, with its whiff of a cover-up, raises many unsettling questions about what top executives knew, and when. Robinson, for instance, concedes that he wasn't made aware of the problems at Optima until a month or so ago, a point that raised eyebrows throughout the industry. Says a high- ranking executive at a rival credit-card company: "I heard rumors about Optima's losses a year ago. Something's wrong when competitors knew before American Express senior executives did. If James Robinson didn't know, he should have...