‘If he tells you he can beat me, I’ll sue!’: Inside the $9 billion friendship between the CEOs of Amex and Delta |
‘If he tells you he can beat me, I’ll sue!’: Inside the $9 billion friendship between the CEOs of Amex and Delta
One of the biggest successes in credit card history was cemented over a giant steak.
It was early in COVID and American Express CEO Stephen Squeri—who had unexpectedly been named to the top job in 2016 (read the story of how, here)—was meeting with Delta CEO Ed Bastian in Atlanta to talk through the terms of their partnership.
“I fed Steve a tomahawk at the Kevin Rathbun steak house,” Bastian recalls. The conversation topic? How to “stop fighting over slices and grow the pie together,” recalls Bastian. “We came to a solution where we have one P&L, we get our percentage, and they get their percentage,” says Squeri. “And everybody’s happy.” By 2019, Squeri and Bastian achieved such........