American Express Global Business Travel has agreed to be
bought by Long Lake Management in an all-cash transaction valued at $6.3
billion, the company announced Monday morning.
The travel management company was rumored
in late November to be exploring a sale after failing to increase share prices last
year. The largest business travel agency in the world went
public in May 2022 via special purpose acquisition company Apollo Strategic
Growth Capital. The price of its shares, traded on the New York Stock Exchange
as Global Business Travel Group (GBTG), continue to trade below its 52-week
high by about 31 percent.
Long Lake, backed by Alpha Wave and General Catalyst, laid
out $9.50 per share, a 60 percent premium over Friday's market close. Long Lake
was founded in 2023 and invests in what it terms "frontier"
technologies that "accelerate service industries."
The purchase—and its premium—show a significant vote of
confidence in GBT's abilities to forge "the gold standard for customer
excellence" with heavy investments in artificial intelligence to support "faster
booking times, proactive disruption resolution, and frictionless travel
administration," according to Long Lake CEO Alex Taubman.
American Express to Sell Stake, Name Stays with GBT
Alpha Wave has backed companies including OpenAI, Anthropic,
SpaceX, Cerebras Systems, TikTok and Aman Group. General Catalyst purports to give
companies "access to insanely powerful advantages" and has supported
brands including Airbnb, Anthropic, Hubspot, Kayak, Snap and Stripe. General
Catalyst's chairman and managing director is Ken Chenault, the former CEO of
American Express, which spun off Amex GBT in 2014 in a 50/50 partnership with
Certares, which paid $900 million to buy in and was largely dedicated to
technology development at the time. Amex remained a 30 percent stakeholder
through GBT’s public incarnation on the NYSE.
American Express will sell all its stake in the company. GBT
will retain the licensing agreement that allows the company to use the American
Express name for "continuity for clients, partners and travelers worldwide,"
according to the company release.
CEO Paul Abbott will continue to lead Amex GBT. He called
out in a statement the success of the sale for shareholders. And, for customers, "this partnership with Long Lake is about serving them even better,"
according to Abbott. "General Catalyst and Alpha Wave, among Long Lake's
world-class investors, have backed some of the most successful technology
companies in the world. Together with Long Lake's applied AI capabilities and
our travel expertise, global scale, and trusted customer and supplier
relationships built over decades, Amex GBT is driving the transformation of
business travel."
Chenault in a statement focused on what each entity brought
to the table: "American Express Global Business Travel was built on trust
earned over decades. Similarly, the foundation of the Long Lake model is a
strong commitment to extraordinary customer service for the modern era."
Tech-Driven GBT Hard Sell for Public Investors?
Recent headlines for Amex GBT included its protracted
acquisition of rival business travel agency CWT, concluded
on Sept. 2 as a $540 million transaction after nearly 18 months in regulatory investigations
in the U.K. and the U.S. Just weeks later, GBT announced a blockbuster partnership
with SAP Concur in which the two companies hitched their technology and
innovation wagons together with a joined vision—and a shared resources team—to
create a new travel services and booking tool collaboration called Complete,
available only to shared Amex GBT and SAP Concur customers. This was ostensibly
to create a technology partnership and innovation environment in which both
providers could "run faster," they said in an interview with BTN, with
travel content integrations and artificial intelligence developments.
Neither the CWT merger nor the Concur technology partnership
created a sustained lift in GBT's share price, though the U.S. Department of
Justice's decision in late July to drop its antitrust case over the CWT deal juiced
the stock for a few months back to levels seen on day-one trading in 2022.
Headwinds since then, including economic uncertainties and the exposure of
international travel to geopolitical risk, have weighed down trading values for
GBT.
In mid-February, when the stock was trading near its 52-week
low, the company issued a financial statement that included unaudited Q4 and
full-year results and disclosed that the board of directors had doubled the
capacity of the company's share repurchase program to $600 million. Such moves
often indicate a company believes its shares are undervalued and telegraphs
confidence that current strategies will bolster that value.
Questions about legacy technology platforms continued to dog
GBT's share price, as did questions around whether GBT had too much on its
plate with an intensive CWT integration process plus its new partnership with
Complete, not to mention Egencia and Neo also in the mix. There's a narrative
that more focused tech-forward players—including Navan, which was long expected to go
public and did
so in October 2025—might outflank legacy players like GBT and others. Navan's brief
time on the NYSE has been volatile, with share prices as low as $8.11 and as
high as $22.75.
That said, on GBT's latest earnings call in March, the
company claimed AI was helping to drive more margin with outright automation
and agent productivity enhancements, and new client-facing enhancements have
just been launched, including a natural-language interface for the Egencia
booking tool. There also was evidence, however, that it has become costlier for
the company to maintain and grow market share. Its latest earnings report
showed a more than 10 percent year-over-year increase in sales and marketing
spend, from $400 million to $442 million, which could compromise margins. This
may have been most evident in its efforts to capture small and midmarket
clients, the results of which executives noted in 2025 had become more muted.
A strong AI narrative—and faster developments supported by
heavyweight AI investors—could turn any customer acquisition challenges around.
Amex GBT used its proxy earnings statement before going
private to exhibit its sheer size and force in the market, including its
ability to retain and win clients.
The company reported first-quarter revenue was up 35 percent
over the same period in 2025, including its CWT-driven business. New client
wins represented $3.4 billion in Q1, including BTN Corporate Travel 100 account
Pfizer and $2 billion in a record single quarter in new SME accounts. Client retention since
the CWT acquisition in September was 96 percent, according to the company.
"Our financial performance and continued commercial
progress in Q1 was strong," said Abbott in a press release. "Our
next-gen Egencia, powered by Agentic AI, and strategic alliance with SAP Concur
on Complete are reshaping how enterprises manage travel and expense globally.
Total new wins value of $3.4 billion and 96 percent customer retention
demonstrate the strength of our offerings and customer relationships."