Robert. A. Savage (born in London, 1933) is an ex president and chief executive of American Express becoming chairman in 1991. He joined American Express in 1965 from Barclays Bank, where he was deputy chief trader of foreign currency. Savage is a graduate of Harvard University.
He is also a past member of the Foreign Exchange Committee. During the famous 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 and American Express 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.
Famous quotes containing the word savage:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)