neilbard
Hedging up
- Oct 8, 2013
- 6,280
Got something to say or just want fewer pesky ads? Join us... 😊
Gully's girls to come back for the premier league season
- Thread starter TomandJerry
- Start date
SPONSORING. V diff to the muppet show up the road.
Sometimes right, sometimes wrong but ALWAYS certain
American Express
The American Express Company, also known as Amex, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Three World Financial Center in New York City. The company was founded in 1850, and is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.[4] The company is best known for its credit card, charge card, and traveler's cheque businesses. In 2016, credit cards using the American Express network accounted for 22.9% of the total dollar volume of credit card transactions in the US.[5] As of December 31, 2016, the company had 109.9 million cards in force, including 47.5 million cards in force in the United States, each with an average annual spending of $17,216.[3]
In 2016, Interbrand ranked American Express as the 25th most valuable brand in the world, estimating the brand to be worth US$18.358 billion.[6] In 2017, Fortune ranked American Express as the 17th most admired company worldwide.[7]
The company's logo, adopted in 1958, is a Centurion[8] whose image appears on the company's traveler's cheques, charge cards and credit cards.
In 1850, American Express was started as an express mail business in Buffalo, New York.[9] It was founded as a joint stock corporation by the merger of the express companies owned by Henry Wells (Wells & Company), William G. Fargo (Livingston, Fargo & Company), and John Warren Butterfield (Wells, Butterfield & Company, the successor earlier in 1850 of Butterfield, Wasson & Company).[1][2] Wells and Fargo also started Wells Fargo & Co. in 1852 when Butterfield and other directors objected to the proposal that American Express extend its operations to California.
American Express initially established its headquarters in a building at the intersection of Jay Street and Hudson Street in what was later called the Tribeca section of Manhattan. For years it enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the movement of express shipments (goods, securities, currency, etc.) throughout New York State. In 1874, American Express moved its headquarters to 65 Broadway in what was becoming the Financial District of Manhattan, a location it was to retain through two buildings.[10]
American Express buildings
In 1854, the American Express Co. purchased a lot on Vesey Street in New York City as the site for its stables. The company's first New York headquarters was an 1858 marble Italianate palazzo at 55–61 Hudson Street, which had a busy freight depot on the ground story with a spur line from the Hudson River Railroad. A stable was constructed in 1867, five blocks north at 4–8 Hubert Street.
The company prospered sufficiently that headquarters were moved in 1874 from the wholesale shipping district to the budding Financial District, and into rented offices in two five-story brownstone commercial buildings at 63 and 65 Broadway that were owned by the Harmony family.[11]
In 1880, American Express built a new warehouse behind the Broadway Building at 46 Trinity Place. The designer is unknown, but it has a façade of brick arches that are reminiscent of pre-skyscraper New York. American Express has long been out of this building, but it still bears a terracotta seal with the American Express Eagle.[12] In 1890–91 the company constructed a new ten-story building by Edward H. Kendall on the site of its former headquarters on Hudson Street.
By 1903, the company had assets of some $28 million, second only to the National City Bank of New York among financial institutions in the city. To reflect this, the company purchased the Broadway buildings and site.[11]
The American Express Company Building at 65 Broadway – the former headquarters of the American Express Company
At the end of the Wells-Fargo reign in 1914, an aggressive new president, George Chadbourne Taylor (1868–1923), who had worked his way up through the company over the previous thirty years, decided to build a new headquarters. The old buildings, dubbed by the New York Times as "among the ancient landmarks" of lower Broadway, were inadequate for such a rapidly expanding concern. After some delays due to the war in Europe, the 21-story neo-classical American Express Co. Building was constructed in 1916–17 to the design of James L. Aspinwall, of the firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker, the successor to the architectural practice of the eminent James Renwick, Jr.. The building consolidated the two lots of the former buildings with a single address: 65 Broadway. This building was part of the "Express Row" section of lower Broadway at the time. The building completed the continuous masonry wall of its block-front and assisted in transforming Broadway into the "canyon" of neo-classical masonry office towers familiar to this day[13]
American Express sold this building in 1975, but retained travel services there. The building was also the headquarters over the years of other prominent firms, including investment bankers J.& W. Seligman & Co. (1940–74), the American Bureau of Shipping, a maritime concern (1977–86), and currently J.J. Kenny, and Standard & Poor's, who has renamed the building for itself.[11][13]
Nationwide expansion
American Express extended its reach nationwide by arranging affiliations with other express companies (including Wells Fargo – the replacement for the two former companies that merged to form American Express), railroads, and steamship companies.[10]
Financial services
In 1882, American Express started its expansion in the area of financial services by launching a money order business[10] to compete with the United States Post Office's money orders.
Sometime between 1888 and 1890, J. C. Fargo took a trip to Europe and returned frustrated and infuriated. Despite the fact that he was president of American Express and that he carried with him traditional letters of credit, he found it difficult to obtain cash anywhere except in major cities. Fargo went to Marcellus Flemming Berry and asked him to create a better solution than the letter of credit. Berry introduced the American Express Traveler's Cheque which was launched in 1891 in denominations of $10, $20, $50, and $100.[14]
Traveler's cheques established American Express as a truly international company. In 1914, at the onset of World War I, American Express in Europe was among the few companies to honor the letters of credit (issued by various banks) held by Americans in Europe, because other financial institutions refused to assist these stranded travelers.
The British government appointed American Express its official agent at the beginning of World War I. They were to deliver letters, money and relief parcels to British prisoners of war. Their employees went into camps to cash drafts for both British and French prisoners and arranged for them to receive money from home.
By the end of the war they were delivering 150 tonnes of parcels per day to prisoners in six countries.[15]
Loss of railroad express business
American Express became one of the monopolies that President Theodore Roosevelt had the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) investigate during his administration. The interest of the ICC was drawn to its strict control of the railroad express business. However, the solution did not come immediately to hand.[10] The solution to this problem came as a coincidence to other problems during World War I.
During the winter of 1917, the United States suffered a severe coal shortage and on December 26 President Woodrow Wilson commandeered the railroads on behalf of the United States government to move federal troops, their supplies, and coal. Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo was assigned the task of consolidating the railway lines for the war effort. All contracts between express companies and railroads were nullified and McAdoo proposed that all existing express companies be consolidated into a single company to serve the country's needs. This ended American Express's express business, and removed them from the ICC’s interest. The result was that a new company called the American Railway Express Agency formed in July 1918. The new entity took custody of all the pooled equipment and property of existing express companies (the largest share of which, 40%, came from American Express, who had owned the rights to the express business over 71,280 miles (114,710 km) of railroad lines, and had 10,000 offices, with over 30,000 employees).
Investment banking
During the 1980s, American Express embarked on an effort to become a financial services supercompany and made a number of acquisitions to create an investment banking arm. In mid-1981 it purchased Sanford I. Weill's Shearson Loeb Rhoades, the second largest securities firm in the United States to form Shearson/American Express.
Shearson Lehman logo
After the purchase of Shearson, Weill was given the position of president of American Express in 1983. Weill grew increasingly unhappy with responsibilities within American Express and his conflicts with American Express' CEO James D. Robinson III. Weill soon realized that he was not positioned to be named CEO and left in August 1985. In 1984, American Express acquired the investment banking and trading firm, Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and added it to the Shearson family, creating Shearson Lehman/American Express. It was Lehman's CEO and former trader Lewis Glucksman who would next lead Shearson Lehman/American Express.
In 1984, Shearson/American Express purchased the 90-year-old Investors Diversified Services, bringing with it a fleet of financial advisors and investment products. In 1988, Shearson Lehman acquired E.F. Hutton & Co., a brokerage firm founded in 1904, this was merged with the investment banking business and the investment banking arm was renamed Shearson Lehman Hutton, Inc.[16]
However, when Harvey Golub became CEO of American Express in 1993, American Express decided to get out of the investment banking business and negotiated the sale of Shearson's retail brokerage and asset management business to Primerica. The Shearson business was merged with Primerica's Smith Barney to create Smith Barney Shearson. Ultimately, the Shearson name was dropped in 1994.[17]
In 1994, American Express spun off of the remaining investment banking and institutional businesses as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. After almost fifteen years of independence, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008 as part of the late–2000s financial crisis.
The Gully Girls performed at the Withdean!
They did indeed. I didn't like them there. I'm not a fan of razzamataz.
Pre season starts the day we go back to training as a squad. whenever that may be.
When Barber binned off Gully's Girls (for reasons IIRC that we never did get to the bottom of), he promised us a cornucopia of alternative pre-match and half-time entertainment. Aside from that truly shocking "street dance crew" a couple of weeks after GG got the boot, and a few operatic interludes, he has failed to deliver on that promise.
I'm not overly fussed about GG returning. But it would be nice to have something to keep us entertained at HT other than having to endure that dullard Reynolds mumbling inaudiby (from the NS anyway) into his crackly mic.
I'm not overly fussed about GG returning. But it would be nice to have something to keep us entertained at HT other than having to endure that dullard Reynolds mumbling inaudiby (from the NS anyway) into his crackly mic.
I'm not a customer. I don't want a customer experience I want a football experience.
- Jun 27, 2012
- 14,612
bubble football !
Brok
🦡
- Dec 26, 2011
- 4,373
I almost agree, but the Withdean was such an awful place that a bit of light entertainment was a relief.
Where we are now, however, is a definite no. No Americanist razzamataz for me either.
Pretty pink fairy
Banned
- Jan 30, 2008
- 31,981
at the Amex ?... GIVE IT A REST
SK1NT
Well-known member
Why the need for HT entertainment anyway? Doesn't everyone use HT to take piss and down a beer? or is that just me
Icy Gull
Back on the rollercoaster
- Jul 5, 2003
- 72,015
Why the need for HT entertainment anyway? Doesn't everyone use HT to take piss and down a beer? or is that just me
Maybe I should whisper it but the only entertainment I require at a football match is from the players/coaches/refs, I can sort myself out for the rest of the day thanks. I am not a fan of the Americanisation of football, I don't need pre match, mid match and post match entertainment.
m20gull
Well-known member
It's not just you.Why the need for HT entertainment anyway? Doesn't everyone use HT to take piss and down a beer? or is that just me
at the Amex ?... GIVE IT A REST
I'd rather take commentary from someone who has actually been to the Amex thanks.