Robert A. Savage (born January 5, 1934) is an ex-president and chief executive of

American Express American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...

Bank, becoming chairman in 1991. He joined American Express in 1965 from Barclays Bank, where he was deputy chief trader of foreign currency. He was born in London, and he was among the "Blitz Babies" evacuated from London during The Blitz. He received an MBA from

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

in 1975. He is also a past member of the Foreign Exchange Committee. During the Edmond Safra affair of the 1980s, he was part of a management group led by Bob Smith which was close to buying the

Trade development Bank Trade Development Bank (TDB) was a private Geneva-based bank built by Edmond Safra, who also founded Brazil's sixth largest bank, Banco Safra, in the 1950s. Beginning with only US$1 million in funds, TDB grew into the flagship of Safra’s interna ...

and American Express Bank for $600 million. The bank's largest clients had been approached, and they were convinced they could swing a deal. Confidence was so high even a press release was being written up in anticipation of an announcement until then Chairman Jim Robinson inexplicably changed his mind.

References

1934 births Living people Harvard Business School alumni Bankers from London 20th-century American businesspeople American chief executives of financial services companies {{US-business-bio-1930s-stub