American Express vs AXA: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: American Express and AXA side by side

1. 1817AXA

   Founding of the Compagnie d'Assurances Mutuelles contre l'Incendie

   Jacques-Théodore le Carpentier and 17 other property owners in Rouen set up a mutual fire insurance company, the earliest predecessor of AXA. It stayed a Normandy mutual, later called Ancienne Mutuelle, for more than a century.

2. 1850American Express

   American Express founded in Buffalo, New York

   Henry Wells, William Fargo and John Butterfield merged three competing express businesses on March 18, 1850 to form the American Express Company, an unincorporated joint-stock association capitalized at 150,000 dollars.

3. 1882American Express

   Money order launched

   American Express introduced its own money order, competing directly with the postal money order the United States Post Office had offered since 1864.

4. 1891American Express

   Traveler's cheque invented

   Marcellus Berry created the American Express Traveler's Cheque after president J.C. Fargo struggled to cash letters of credit on a European trip in 1890.

5. 1917American Express

   Federal control of the express industry

   Federal control of the railroads began in December 1917, and in 1918 the domestic express operations of American Express and its rivals were consolidated into the American Railway Express Company.

6. 1958American Express

   First American Express charge card

   American Express issued its first charge card on October 1, 1958, printed on paper with a 6 dollar annual fee, after signing up more than 250,000 card members before launch.

7. 1966American Express

   Gold Card introduced

   American Express launched the Gold Card in 1966 for higher-spending executives and frequent travelers, the first tier above the standard card and the start of the graded premium lineup that later added the Platinum Card and the Centurion Card.

8. 1975AXA

   Claude Bébéar becomes chief executive

   Bébéar, recruited in 1958 by André Sahut d'Izarn, took over the Anciennes Mutuelles group in 1975 after Sahut d'Izarn's death and the settlement of a strike that had paralysed the company in April 1974.

9. 1982AXA

   Takeover of the Drouot Group

   Bébéar took control of the Drouot Group, then the leading private French insurance group, and became its chairman alongside his role at Mutuelles Unies.

10. 1984American Express

    Platinum Card launched during the financial supermarket build-out

    American Express introduced The Platinum Card by invitation in 1984 with a 250 dollar annual fee, creating the ultra-premium card category.

11. 1985AXA

    Creation of the AXA name

    The group adopted the invented name AXA, short and pronounceable in any language, and Bébéar moved from running the insurance companies to chairing the group.

12. 1986AXA

    Acquisition of the Présence Group

    AXA bought the Présence Group in April 1986, continuing the consolidation of French insurers.

13. 1988AXA

    Merger with Compagnie du Midi

    The merger with Compagnie du Midi made AXA the second-largest French insurance group behind UAP and brought Equity and Law, then the sixth-largest life insurer in the United Kingdom. Bébéar was elected Manager of the Year the same year.

14. 1991AXA

    Control of The Equitable in the United States

    After a failed attempt to buy Farmers, AXA agreed in July 1991 to demutualise and take control of The Equitable, then the fifth-largest life insurer in the United States, which also brought Alliance Capital Management.

15. 1993American Express

    Harvey Golub refocuses the company

    Harvey Golub became chief executive in 1993 and unwound the conglomerate: the Shearson brokerage went to Primerica's Smith Barney and The Boston Company to Mellon Bank in 1993, and Lehman Brothers was spun off in 1994.

16. 1996AXA

    Acquisition of UAP

    AXA bought UAP, a French insurer twice its size, doubling its French business and reaching critical mass in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany. The merger took effect in 1997.

17. 1999American Express

    Centurion Card launched

    American Express created the Centurion Card in 1999, an invitation-only metal card that became the top tier of its lineup. The company has never published its fee schedule, and the product functions mainly as a positioning device for the cards below it.

18. 1999AXA

    Guardian Royal Exchange and Nippon Dantai

    Guardian Royal Exchange joined AXA in early 1999, adding scale in United Kingdom property, casualty and health insurance, and AXA took control of Nippon Dantai, then the thirteenth-largest life insurer in Japan.

19. 2001American Express

    Kenneth Chenault becomes chief executive

    Kenneth Chenault became chief executive in January 2001, weeks before the September 11 attacks damaged the company's lower Manhattan operations and cut travel spending sharply.

20. 2006AXA

    Acquisition of Winterthur

    AXA agreed to buy Winterthur from Credit Suisse for ~$14.8 billion (CHF 12.3 billion), about $8.93 billion (EUR 7.9 billion) in cash, strengthening its position in Switzerland, Germany and central and eastern Europe.

21. 2008American Express

    Conversion to a bank holding company

    On November 10, 2008 the Federal Reserve Board approved applications by American Express Company and American Express Travel Related Services to become bank holding companies, on conversion of American Express Centurion Bank from an industrial loan company int…

22. 2011AXA

    Sale of AXA Canada

    AXA sold its Canadian operations to Intact Financial Corp. for ~$1.87 billion (C$2.6 billion) as part of a portfolio review.

23. 2016American Express

    Costco co-brand ends

    Costco moved its United States co-branded card to Citigroup and Visa on June 20, 2016, ending a 16-year exclusive relationship after the two sides failed to agree terms, and stopped accepting American Express cards in its warehouses.

24. 2018American Express

    Stephen Squeri becomes chairman and chief executive

    Stephen Squeri succeeded Kenneth Chenault in February 2018 after more than three decades inside the company, including spells as chief information officer and group president of Global Corporate Services.

25. 2018AXA

    Acquisition of XL Group

    AXA bought XL Group for $15.3 billion in cash, shifting the group toward commercial property and casualty lines and creating the AXA XL platform.

26. 2020American Express

    Pandemic hits travel and entertainment spending

    COVID-19 restrictions cut the travel and entertainment spending American Express depends on, and total revenues net of interest expense fell from 43.6 billion dollars in 2019 to 36.1 billion dollars in 2020, with net income down to 3.1 billion dollars.

27. 2024American Express

    Tock acquisition widens the dining platform

    American Express agreed in June 2024 to buy Tock, a reservation, table and event management platform, from Squarespace for 400 million dollars in cash, pairing it with Resy, which it had bought in 2019.

28. 2024AXA

    Launch of the Unlock the Future plan

    With its 2023 results in February 2024 AXA presented a 2024 to 2026 plan targeting underlying earnings per share growth of 6% to 8% a year, an underlying return on equity of 14% to 16% and a new capital management policy.

29. 2025American Express

    Platinum refresh and record FY2025 results

    American Express unveiled refreshed United States Consumer and Business Platinum Cards on September 18, 2025, raising the annual fee from 695 dollars to 895 dollars and adding statement credits it values at over 3,500 dollars a year.

30. 2025AXA

    Sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas

    AXA completed the sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas Cardif on July 1, 2025 for ~$5.76 billion (EUR 5.1 billion) in cash, a total transaction value of ~$6.1 billion (EUR 5.4 billion), and signed a long-term agreement for BNP Paribas to manage a lar…

31. 2025AXA

    Death of founder Claude Bébéar

    AXA announced on November 4, 2025 that Claude Bébéar, its founder and Honorary Chairman, had died at the age of 90. He ran the group from 1975 to 2000 and created the AXA name in 1985.

Acquisitions

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