The president of American Express, Ed Gilligan, died on Friday when he was returning to New York on one of the company’s planes from a business trip. He had fallen ill during the flight and the aircraft was even forced to make an emergency landing.
The Chairman and CEO of American Express, Kenneth Chenault released a statement saying his thoughts and blessings were with Lisa, Gilligan’s wife and his four children Shane, Kevin, Meaghan and Katie who were in shock.
It was in 2013 that Gilligan became the president of this New York credit card & global payments company where he had starting working as an intern when he was just 20 years old.
The people who had the pleasure of working with him had benefitted substantially from his foresight, leadership and enthusiasm. But this sudden incident definitely left them in shock and feeling a lot of pain as well.
Over his tenure, Gilligan worked with every area at American Express including merchant services, small business, travel and commercial cards. He was most recently working on payments and digital partnerships.
At the beginning of 2015, American Express lost an US antitrust suit and along with it, its relation with Costco. The US dollar is now stronger than it was in the 1st quarter of 2015 and that has also harmed the profits of the company substantially. But the company did benefit since its card users spent much more during this period.
The annual fees of some of the company’s popular cards were about to be increased along with a few of the benefits related to them. The shares of the company fell by 14% which was a major problem in itself and has now become even more challenging since Ed Gilligan is no more.
