American Express Co. has nabbed a former Google Inc. executive to run a joint venture with French e-commerce website vente-privee.com.
The venture will offer deals on luxury goods to U.S. customers.
The New York credit card lender said Wednesday that Mike Steib will "work to leverage the assets" and relationships of Amex and ventee-privee.com to "build the joint venture into a leader in the U.S. online private sales market."
Steib, who most recently ran video advertising for Google's Americas region, "brings a wealth of technology experience to the role and has a track record of leveraging data and analytics to build new businesses – exactly the task ahead for our joint venture," Dan Schulman, the group president for enterprise growth at Amex, said in a press release.
Steib is the latest prominent hire Amex has made from a well-known tech company as it works to diversify its business beyond traditional credit and charge cards.
Schulman joined Amex last year after spending many years at Sprint Nextel Corp., Virgin Mobile USA and AT&T Inc. Earlier this year, Amex also hired Laura Kelly, a former executive overseeing prepaid card business at MasterCard Inc., to run new product development.
Amex announced the joint venture with vente-privee.com in May with the intention of offering deals on high-end fashion goods in the U.S. Vente-privee.com sells excess inventory for designer brands by offering discounts that are valid for a limited amount of time.
Ventee-privee.com has said the joint venture is expected to launch around Christmas or early next year.
"Our business is built upon creating a rich online shopping experience and developing deep relationships with our brand partners," Jacques-Antoine Granjon, the chief executive of ventee-privee.com, said in the release. "Mike has exactly the right mix of technology background and relationship building that we need to launch and grow ventee-privee.com in the U.S.
