James D. Robinson III, former head of American Express, dies at 88

James D. Robinson III, who from 1977 to 1993 as CEO of the American Express Company helped transform Wall Street into a more competitive financial marketplace, with a wide variety of companies under one roof, died Monday in Roslyn, N.Y. Long Island. He was 88.

The death, at a hospital, was caused by respiratory failure due to recurrent pneumonia, Walter Montgomery, a family spokesman, wrote in an announcement.

The son of Georgia nobility, Mr. Robinson followed a well-trodden path to financial success, power and influence: from private school to the Ivy League and then to the affluent canyons of Lower Manhattan, with forays into the halls of Capitol Hill.

In Washington, he was among Wall Street’s most influential advocates for deregulating the financial industry and broadening its horizons. Some called him the unofficial Secretary of State for corporate America.

The deregulation he fought for was largely achieved when Congress repealed the crisis-era Glass-Steagall legislation in 1999. As a result, commercial banks were given the authority to underwrite and trade corporate bonds and own insurance companies.

This cultural shift also prompted the securities industry to respond with increasingly sophisticated and complex computerized products. These included highly leveraged derivatives, which played a major role in the 2008 market crisis.

But while Mr. Robinson subsequently acknowledged that financial deregulation “went too far,” he never advocated reimposing Glass-Steagall restrictions, which had erected a wall between investment banks and retail banks.

Mr. Robinson was perhaps best known to the public for his role in the epic $25 billion battle for control of RJR Nabisco in 1988 and his dismissal by disgruntled shareholders.

In the Nabisco episode, an Amex investment firm, Shearson Lehman Hutton, was the financier of an RJR Nabisco management group that sought to gain control of the company in a bidding war that was ultimately won by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company.

“I was a facilitator trying to bring the parties together,” Mr. Robinson said in an interview for this obituary in 2016.

That acquisition was the largest corporate deal ever for nearly a decade and was called by some the pinnacle of a new Gilded Age.

The battle was chronicled in Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s 1989 best-selling book, “Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco.” The book was the basis of a 1993 HBO film in which Mr. Robinson was played by Fred D. Thompson, who later became a U.S. Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. Robinson’s career was most defined by the fact that he placed American Express at the forefront of the business boundaries that his era was pushing.

“We coined the term ‘diversified financial services industry,’” Mr. Robinson said in the interview in his Midtown Manhattan office (where an abstract Frank Sinatra painting hung on the wall).

During his tenure, the American Express travel and payment card empire expanded to include Shearson Lehman Hutton; First Data Corporation, a payments group; Investors Diversified Services, an investment fund; and the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company. American Express also operated an international bank.

Mr. Robinson made an unsuccessful bid for the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company in 1978 and at one point considered acquiring the Walt Disney Company.

But the prosperity of the late 1980s and early 1990s turned into what he called a “dark period,” when the stock market and real estate industry collapsed and merchants, in what became known as the “Boston Fee Party,” nationwide revolted against the high costs. of accepting American Express cards.

The uprising forced the company to lower its so-called discount rate (about 4 percent per transaction) to match that of its credit card competitors, which charged a third of that rate.

Dissatisfied shareholders and directors forced Mr Robinson to resign in 1993, at the age of 57.

Within a year, he and his son and Stuart J. Ellman founded RRE Ventures, a New York venture capital firm that invests in new information technology companies.

His departure from American Express came a decade after he presided over the pressured departure of Sanford I. Weill, the Wall Street titan whose securities empire was absorbed by American Express under Robinson.

The brash, Brooklyn-born Mr. Weill, who started his career on Wall Street as a messenger, and Mr. Robinson, a patrician from Georgia, were a culturally odd couple. When Mr. Weill’s proposal to buy Fireman’s Fund, which he ran, was rejected by Amex’s board, he decided he had to leave.

Mr. Weill found Mr. Robinson bureaucratic and indecisive. But in the 2016 interview, Mr. Robinson challenged the widely held belief that Mr. Weill was the risk-taker and that he was risk-averse. In fact, Mr. Robinson claimed, “it was the opposite.”

James Dixon Robinson III – also known as ‘Jimmy three sticks’ because of his use of Roman numerals – was born on November 19, 1935 in Atlanta, the son of James Dixon Robinson Jr. And Josephine (Crawford) Robinson. The son and grandson of prominent Georgia bankers (his father was chairman of the First National Bank of Atlanta), he grew up with two sisters in the city’s affluent Buckhead section.

A neighbor, celebrated golfer Bobby Jones, inspired Jimmy to take up the game at age 8, tipping occasionally. His 2016 curriculum vitae listed seven golf club memberships, including Augusta National (founded by Jones), and nine former golf club memberships.

After attending Woodberry Forest, a private school in Virginia, Mr. Robinson enrolled as a day student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he studied industrial management. After graduating in 1957, he joined the Navy, which assigned him as a pay officer or paymaster at the nuclear submarine base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In the meantime, he took correspondence courses at the New York Stock Exchange. That same year he married Bettye Bradley, with whom he had two children.

After resigning in 1959, Mr. Robinson enrolled at Harvard Business School and received an MBA in 1961. He began his business career at Morgan Guaranty Trust Company and after five years was named assistant to the CEO, Thomas S. Gates Jr. .

In 1968, Mr. Robinson became a partner at White Weld & Company, where he developed an interest in venture capital. He joined American Express in 1970 as an executive vice president, recruited by Eugene R. Black Sr., an Atlanta native, Amex executive and former head of the World Bank. Mr. Robinson became president in 1975 and chairman and chief executive officer in 1977.

He also served as chairman and CEO of Shearson Lehman Brothers, the brokerage subsidiary of American Express.

He resigned in early 1993 after a boardroom row over his continued employment. Major shareholders sought his ouster. The Times reported that he left behind a company with “crumbling morale,” erratic profits and losses, and a falling stock price. Analysts, investors, some board members and even his predecessor, Howard L. Clark Sr., had turned against him.

His marriage to Ms. Bradley ended in 1983 after she suffered a disabling brain aneurysm, he said, and filed for divorce.

In 1984 he married Linda Gossena high-profile PR manager who later advised him during the RJR Nabisco battle. She is the daughter of Freeman F. Gosden, co-creator and voice of the radio program “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” As he became active in philanthropies and fundraising for Republican candidates, Mr. Robinson and his wife became prominent members of a glittering New York social scene, living at the famously exclusive address of 778 Park Avenue.

He is survived by his wife; his two children from his first marriage, James IV and Emily Cook; two children from his second marriage, Nicholas and Olivia Robinson; his sister, Frances Huber; and six grandchildren. Mr. Robinson lived on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Asked at age 80 when he planned to retire, Mr. Robinson said, “Three years after I’m dead.” He added that if his dreams of technological advancement came true, “I might be able to make that happen.”

Robert D. Hershey Jr.a reporter who spent years covering Wall Street finances and economics for The Times, died in January. Alex Traub reporting contributed.