Amex GBT’s 12-Year Ownership Saga — Who Won and Lost

The $6.3 billion take-private acquisition of Amex GBT by Long Lake Management, announced Monday, is the largest corporate travel deal in years. It’s also the final chapter of an ownership saga that began in 2014 when American Express carved out its business travel division into a joint venture with a Greg O’Hara’s Certares-led investor consortium.

It wound through a failed $5 billion recapitalization, a pandemic, a SPAC debut, a $326 million paper loss for Expedia, the acquisition of CWT, and now a go-private deal led by a two-year-old AI-focused holding company backed by the same investors behind Anthropic and OpenAI.

The cap table at exit tells you who played the 12-year game well and who didn’t. Skift used AI analysis to compile the cap table.

American Express: The Unambiguous Winner

American Express walks away with approximately $1.5 billion in cash and a confirmed $975 million pre-tax gain, according to an 8-K the company filed Mon