American Express vs Broadcom: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: American Express and Broadcom side by side

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 1991Broadcom

   Broadcom Corporation founded

   UCLA professor Henry Samueli and his former doctoral student Henry Nicholas III found Broadcom Corporation in Los Angeles to build broadband communications chips in CMOS, starting with chips for cable modems and digital set-top boxes.

9. 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.

10. 1998Broadcom

    Broadcom Corporation IPO

    Broadcom Corporation lists on Nasdaq in April 1998 at $24 a share, as cable operators roll out DOCSIS cable modems built on its chips.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 2005Broadcom

    Avago Technologies formed

    KKR and Silver Lake buy Agilent Technologies' semiconductor products group, whose roots go back to Hewlett-Packard's chip operations, for about $2.66 billion and name it Avago Technologies.

14. 2006Broadcom

    Hock Tan becomes CEO of Avago

    Hock Tan becomes president and CEO of Avago in March 2006 and begins pruning its portfolio to the businesses with defensible technology.

15. 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…

16. 2009Broadcom

    Avago lists on Nasdaq

    Avago Technologies goes public on Nasdaq in August 2009 at $15 a share, giving it stock to use in later acquisitions.

17. 2014Broadcom

    LSI Corporation acquired

    Avago completes its $6.6 billion purchase of LSI in May 2014, adding storage controllers and custom ASIC design teams.

18. 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.

19. 2016Broadcom

    Avago buys Broadcom Corporation

    Avago completes its $37 billion acquisition of Broadcom Corporation in February 2016, takes the Broadcom name and trades as AVGO.

20. 2017Broadcom

    Brocade acquired

    Broadcom completes its $5.9 billion purchase of Brocade Communications in November 2017, adding Fibre Channel storage networking switches.

21. 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.

22. 2018Broadcom

    Qualcomm bid blocked and move to the U.S.

    President Trump blocks Broadcom's unsolicited bid for Qualcomm on national security grounds in March 2018. Broadcom completes its redomicile from Singapore to the United States that April.

23. 2018Broadcom

    CA Technologies acquired

    Broadcom completes its $18.9 billion purchase of CA Technologies in November 2018, its first large software deal, creating the infrastructure software segment.

24. 2019Broadcom

    Symantec enterprise security acquired

    Broadcom buys Symantec's enterprise security business for $10.7 billion in November 2019, adding endpoint, web and data loss prevention software.

25. 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.

26. 2022Broadcom

    VMware deal announced

    Broadcom agrees in May 2022 to buy VMware in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $61 billion at announcement.

27. 2023Broadcom

    VMware acquisition closes

    Broadcom completes the VMware acquisition on 22 November 2023 after clearances in the U.S., EU, UK and China, a deal valued at about $69 billion including assumed debt.

28. 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.

29. 2024Broadcom

    Stock split and $1 trillion market value

    Broadcom splits its stock 10-for-1 in July 2024, sells VMware's end-user computing unit to KKR for about $4 billion, reports fiscal 2024 revenue of $51.6 billion and passes $1 trillion in market value in December 2024.

30. 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.

31. 2025Broadcom

    OpenAI partnership and record fiscal 2025

    OpenAI and Broadcom agree in October 2025 to deploy 10 gigawatts of OpenAI-designed accelerators. Fiscal 2025 revenue rises 24% to $63.9 billion, with about $20 billion from AI chips.

32. 2026Broadcom

    AI chips pass half of revenue

    Amie Thuener becomes CFO in June 2026. Third-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue rises 86% to $29.6 billion, and AI semiconductor revenue of $16.7 billion is 56% of the total.

Acquisitions

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