James D. Robinson III, who as chief government of the American Categorical Firm from 1977 to 1993 helped remodel Wall Avenue right into a extra aggressive monetary market, with a large range of companies housed underneath single roofs, died on Monday in Roslyn, N.Y., on Lengthy Island. He was 88.
The dying, at a hospital, was attributable to respiratory failure from recurrent pneumonia, Walter Montgomery, a spokesman for the household, wrote in an announcement.
A soft-spoken son of the Georgia gentry, Mr. Robinson adopted a well-worn path to monetary success, energy and affect: from non-public college to the Ivy League after which on to the moneyed canyons of Decrease Manhattan, with facet journeys to the corridors of Capitol Hill.
In Washington, he was amongst Wall Avenue’s most influential advocates for deregulating the monetary trade and widening its horizons. Some referred to as him the unofficial secretary of state for company America.
The deregulation he fought for was largely completed with Congress’s repeal of the Melancholy-era Glass-Steagall laws in 1999. In consequence, industrial banks turned empowered to underwrite and commerce company securities and personal insurance coverage corporations.
This cultural shift additionally prompted the securities trade to reply with more and more refined and complicated computer-enabled merchandise. Amongst them had been extremely leveraged derivatives that figured importantly available in the market meltdown of 2008.
However whereas Mr. Robinson subsequently acknowledged that monetary deregulation “went too far,” he by no means argued for the reimposition of Glass-Steagall restrictions, which had erected a wall between funding banking and retail banks.
Mr. Robinson might have been greatest identified to the general public for his function within the epic $25 billion battle for management of RJR Nabisco in 1988 and his dismissal by disgruntled shareholders.
Within the Nabisco episode, an Amex-owned funding agency, Shearson Lehman Hutton, was the monetary backer of an RJR Nabisco administration group that sought to regulate the corporate in a bidding warfare that was finally gained by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Firm.
“I used to be a facilitator attempting to deliver the edges collectively,” Mr. Robinson mentioned in an interview for this obituary in 2016.
That takeover stood as the most important enterprise deal on report for nearly a decade and was referred to as by some the excessive level of a brand new gilded age.
The wrestle was chronicled in Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s best-selling 1989 guide, “Barbarians on the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco.” The guide was the idea of a 1993 HBO film by which Mr. Robinson was performed by Fred D. Thompson, who later turned a United States senator from Tennessee.
Mr. Robinson’s profession was most outlined by his placing American Categorical within the vanguard of his period’s company boundary-stretching.
“We coined the time period ‘diversified monetary providers trade,’” Mr. Robinson mentioned within the interview, in his Midtown Manhattan workplace (the place an summary portray by Frank Sinatra held on a wall).
Throughout his tenure, the American Categorical journey and charge-card empire expanded to incorporate Shearson Lehman Hutton; First Knowledge Company, a funds concern; Buyers Diversified Companies, a mutual fund firm; and the Fireman’s Fund Insurance coverage Firm. American Categorical additionally operated a global financial institution.
Mr. Robinson made an unsuccessful bid in 1978 for the McGraw-Hill Publishing Firm and at one level thought of buying the Walt Disney Firm.
However the prosperity of the late Nineteen Eighties and early ’90s was what he referred to as a “darkish interval” because the inventory market and brokerage enterprise slumped and retailers, in what turned often known as the “Boston payment social gathering,” revolted nationwide over the excessive value of accepting American Categorical playing cards.
The rise up pressured the corporate to chop its so-called low cost fee — about 4 % per transaction — to match that of its credit-card opponents, which had been charging one-third as a lot.
Disgruntled stockholders and administrators pressured Mr. Robinson to resign in 1993, at 57.
Inside a 12 months he had joined his son and Stuart J. Ellman to type RRE Ventures, a New York enterprise capital agency investing in new information-technology corporations.
His ouster from American Categorical got here a decade after he had presided over the pressured departure of Sanford I. Weill, the Wall Avenue titan whose securities empire had been absorbed by American Categorical underneath Mr. Robinson.
The brash, Brooklyn-born Mr. Weill, who began his Wall Avenue profession as a messenger, and Mr. Robinson, a patrician Georgian, made a cultural odd couple. When Mr. Weill’s proposal to purchase Fireman’s Fund, which he headed, was rejected by the Amex board, he determined he needed to depart.
Mr. Weill thought Mr. Robinson bureaucratic and indecisive. However within the 2016 interview, Mr. Robinson challenged a extensively held perception that Mr. Weill was the risk-taker and that he was risk-averse. Really, Mr. Robinson contended, “it was the alternative.”
James Dixon Robinson III — generally referred to as “Jimmy three sticks” due to his use of Roman numerals — was born on Nov. 19, 1935, in Atlanta to James Dixon Robinson Jr. and Josephine (Crawford) Robinson. The son and grandson of outstanding Georgia bankers — his father was chairman of First Nationwide Financial institution of Atlanta — he grew up with two sisters within the metropolis’s prosperous Buckhead district.
One neighbor, the celebrated golfer Bobby Jones, helped encourage Jimmy to begin taking part in the sport at 8, providing the occasional tip. His 2016 curriculum vitae listed seven golf membership memberships, together with Augusta Nationwide (based by Jones), and 9 former golf membership memberships.
After attending Woodberry Forest, a non-public college in Virginia, Mr. Robinson enrolled as a day scholar on the Georgia Institute of Expertise, the place he studied industrial administration. After graduating in 1957, he joined the Navy, which assigned him to the nuclear submarine base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as a disbursing officer, or paymaster. Within the meantime he took New York Inventory Trade correspondence programs. That very same 12 months he married Bettye Bradley, with whom he had two youngsters.
After his discharge in 1959, Mr. Robinson enrolled on the Harvard Enterprise Faculty and earned an M.B.A. in 1961. He started his enterprise profession at Morgan Warranty Belief Firm and after 5 years was named assistant to the chief government, Thomas S. Gates Jr.
In 1968, Mr. Robinson turned a accomplice at White Weld & Firm, the place he developed an curiosity in enterprise capital. He joined American Categorical in 1970 as an government vp, recruited by Eugene R. Black Sr., an Atlanta native, Amex director and former head of the World Financial institution. Mr. Robinson turned president in 1975 and chairman and chief government in 1977.
He was additionally chairman and chief government of Shearson Lehman Brothers, American Categorical’s brokerage subsidiary.
He resigned in early 1993 after a boardroom battle over his persevering with within the job. Main shareholders sought his ouster. The Instances reported that he had left behind an organization with “crumbling morale,” erratic earnings and losses, and a declining inventory value. Analysts, buyers, some board members and even his predecessor, Howard L. Clark Sr., had turned in opposition to him.
His marriage to Ms. Bradley led to 1983 after she had an incapacitating mind aneurysm, he mentioned, and requested for a divorce.
In 1984, he married Linda Gosden, a high-profile public relations government who later suggested him through the RJR Nabisco battle. She is the daughter of Freeman F. Gosden, co-creator and a voice of the radio program “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” As he turned energetic in philanthropies and fund-raising for Republican candidates, Mr. Robinson and his spouse turned outstanding members of a glittering New York social scene, dwelling on the famously unique tackle 778 Park Avenue.
He’s survived by his spouse; his two youngsters from his first marriage, James IV and Emily Cook dinner; two youngsters from his second marriage, Nicholas and Olivia Robinson; his sister, Frances Huber; and 6 grandchildren. Mr. Robinson lived on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
At 80, when requested when he deliberate to retire, Mr. Robinson mentioned, “Three years after I’m lifeless.” He added that if his goals for technological progress had been realized, “I might be able to ship on that.”
Robert D. Hershey Jr., a reporter who for a few years coated Wall Avenue finance and economics for The Instances, died in January. Alex Traub contributed reporting.
