“As we prepare to spin off our financial advisors business and become the new American Express Company, I am making a number of organization and management changes to help accelerate the implementation of our growth strategies and broaden our executive leadership team.

“These changes are driven by several key developments in our business, including: the rapid growth of our Global Network Services (GNS) business in the United States and around the world; the expansion of our worldwide merchant network; the broader long-term relationships we are developing to build business with our merchant partners; and the recent entry of the Travelers Cheque business into the prepaid card arena. They also address the changes we need to make following the recent announcements of Dave House's retirement and Steve Squeri's move from Global Commercial Card to head Technologies.

“Our company is in an excellent position, and we are generating strong momentum. Our businesses are strong and diverse, and we have a robust pipeline of opportunities for growth. I believe we can further strengthen our long-term position and propel the new American Express into the ranks of the most successful and most admired companies in the world.

“The changes I'm announcing today are designed to help us accomplish these important objectives.

“Effective immediately, the functions and people that have been reporting to Dave House will be organized as follows:

“GNS, headed by Peter Godfrey, will report to Gary Crittenden, who also retains his responsibilities as the company's chief financial officer. Under Dave's and Peter's leadership, GNS has become a significant component of the company's overall business strategy, particularly with the opening of the U.S. and China markets over the past year. As a discrete business unit reporting to Gary, Peter and his team will continue their focus on growing our network of GNS partners and products. This structure will also help ensure that the firewalls between this business and our proprietary card issuing businesses are strong and effective. With this move, Gary, who has done a superb job as our CFO for the last five years, will gain responsibility for helping to further develop one of our fastest growing global businesses. In addition to his strong background in finance, Gary has run successful businesses before joining American Express in 2000, including Sears' hardware store business, among others.

“The Travelers Cheque and Prepaid Services Group (TCPS), headed by Val Soranno-Keating, will report to Al Kelly, group president of our U.S. Consumer and Small Business Services (CSBS) organization. Val will join the CSBS leadership team. Under Val's leadership, our TCPS business -- the company's oldest consumer payment business -- has been reinvigorated with the recent launch of our new line of prepaid card products. Given the close ties this business has with both our consumer card and travel businesses, it makes sense to align it more closely with CSBS in order to help accelerate its growth. Al, who is one of our most seasoned and successful leaders, has led our U.S. consumer card business to its strongest position in many years. With the addition of TCPS, he will take on responsibility for a global business.

“We are changing the way Global Establishment Services is organized to help us achieve our goal of becoming the network of choice for high-spending cardmembers. Our closed-loop network is one of our most important business assets. As such, it must continue to be developed and managed in a way that enables us to deliver superior value to all issuers and keeps strong firewalls in place to ensure that the confidential information of each individual issuer is protected. Therefore, we will continue to manage the functions that support the network globally, and separate and apart from both our proprietary and GNS card issuing businesses. In addition, there are other aspects of our Establishment Services (ES) business that can be better leveraged to support the growth of our card businesses on a regional basis around the world. In order to further the development of both aspects of our ES business, we are making the following changes:

“Bill Glenn, currently head of ES for the Americas, will assume worldwide responsibility for operations, pricing, marketing and strategy for the merchant network. These functions, which formerly reported to Dave House, are responsible for the development of the American Express closed-loop network, and they must continue to be developed for the benefit of both proprietary and third party issuers alike. For this reason, this group of network activities will continue to be managed separately, and Bill will report directly to me for these areas. Reporting to Bill as part of this companywide team are: Susan Hillel, who will become head of Global Network Operations, responsible for network development and servicing, as well as emerging payments (Susan will continue to report separately to Peter Godfrey for operations and servicing for our GNS partners); Brad Thompson, who heads ES Pricing; Elizabeth Rutledge, who will lead Network Marketing and Value Added Services; and Beth Hurvitz, who will become head of Network Strategy and Privacy.

“In this role, Bill will also be responsible for leading the Global ES Council, which is charged with developing multinational account strategy, global marketing platforms and products, as well as dealing with key industry and regulatory issues.

“In addition, Bill will remain president of ES North America, responsible for merchant acquisition, and account development and management functions in the U.S. and Canada. In this role, he will report to Al Kelly and become part of the CSBS leadership team. The ES acquisition and account management teams under Bill will serve as the primary contact with merchants to sell and manage both proprietary and network value propositions. The group will continue to be accountable for developing and growing merchant relationships and expanding coverage.

“We have the highest spending cardmembers of any of our competitors, and the gap between the rest of the industry and us has been widening in recent years. Nevertheless, we recognize that this is a fiercely competitive industry, and we need to continue to widen our competitive advantage. We can do so by aligning the management of our merchant acquisition and account management functions more closely with our card-issuing businesses. This will help us to better target and prioritize coverage goals, as well as develop compelling, innovative cardmember offers that leverage both our relationships with merchants and our closed-loop network to attract and retain loyal, high-spending customers.

“Bill is exceptionally well suited to perform this dual role. Since joining American Express in 2002, Bill has enabled us to develop and strengthen strategic relationships with our merchant partners, expand card acceptance into new industries, and renew our emphasis on the value we deliver to merchants. Al and I, along with the entire Global Leadership Team, will ensure that Bill has the support he needs to be successful in making ours the network of choice for issuers and merchants around the world.

“David Herrick, head of ES for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Mark Gamble, head of ES for Japan/Asia Pacific/Australia, and the head of ES for Latin America/Caribbean (currently open), will report to Ed Gilligan, group president of International Payments and Global Corporate Services. Ed, who is one of our most accomplished and versatile leaders, has done a terrific job of driving a spend-centric focus across all our businesses outside the United States, which has resulted in strong increases in billed business across International.

“The ES teams led by David in EMEA, Mark in JAPA and (until recently) Doria Camaraza in LAC, have done an excellent job helping to make our spend-centric strategy come to life by growing coverage and building strong merchant relationships in key markets around the world. As in the U.S. and Canadian markets, having the card issuing business working even more closely with the merchant acquisition and account management functions will help us further strengthen our ability to develop and deliver innovative, value added programs that will attract and retain high-spending cardmembers. This in turn, will help increase coverage and overall market share in key international markets.

“In addition to the organizational changes outlined above, we are announcing a number of management appointments that will serve to broaden the experience and skills of our leadership team.

“To realize our potential and achieve our aspirations for the new American Express, we must continue to develop our best talent. We need leaders who have a deep understanding of many different aspects of our business. We need people who are experienced in leading organizations in different parts of the world. And, above all, we must have leaders who view themselves as members of one team, rather than heading up one particular business or another. The moves we are announcing today are part of this overall strategy for developing the next generation of the company's executive leadership. Specifically:

“Gordon Smith, currently president of the U.S. Consumer Card Services Group (CCSG), will become president of Global Commercial Card, reporting to Ed Gilligan. Gordon, who has done an outstanding job leading our U.S. consumer card business for the past four years, will now take on the global Commercial Card position formerly held by Steve Squeri. Gordon has been with American Express for over 25 years, and over the course of his tenure, he has held leadership positions in a wide variety of U.S. and international card businesses. In his most recent role as president of the U.S. Consumer Card business, Gordon and his team have launched an array of innovative new products, including the Green and Gold Rewards Cards, Blue Cash, IN:NYC, and new co-branded cards with Costco, Delta Airlines and JetBlue Airways. Thanks in large part to the CCSG team's efforts, we have expanded our customer base and have delivered double digit spending growth over the past several years, outpacing virtually all of our competitors. Gordon will leverage his outstanding leadership skills and deep knowledge of the consumer card business as he takes on the challenge of continuing the strong growth of our commercial card business on a global basis.

“Jud Linville, currently head of the US Service Delivery Network (SDN) and American Express Interactive (AXPi), will succeed Gordon as president of CCSG. Jud will continue to report to Al Kelly, and he will retain his responsibilities for AXPi. Jud and his team have made great progress over the past four years to improve the customer experience for our cardmembers, expand our global servicing network, significantly increase our online servicing capabilities, and build one of the most efficient customer service networks in the industry. Along the way, he has developed an outstanding and diverse team of leaders who are responsible for ensuring that we continue to deliver the best customer service in the industry. These accomplishments, coupled with his previous experience leading our Corporate Services business in the United States and Canada, will be invaluable as he works to continue CCSG's record of developing new products that capture the imagination of the marketplace and deepen our relationships with customers.

“Jim Bush, currently regional president of the JAPA region, is being promoted and will move back to the United States to succeed Jud as head of the SDN organization. Jim, who had reported to Ed Gilligan as part of the international consumer card leadership team, will now report to Al Kelly. While leading JAPA, he has been instrumental in driving improvements in our business model across 12 diverse markets, resulting in increased spending, revenues and customers, while lowering costs. Jim and his team successfully launched a number of premium lending products for high-spending customers in key markets, and he did an outstanding job leading the region through a number of challenging issues, including the devastating tsunamis earlier this year and the SARs outbreak, among others. Jim is returning to our U.S. consumer card business, where he started his career and led several important initiatives, including the development of a number of our major co-branded cards and the launch of Blue, from American Express. Ed will name a new regional president for JAPA shortly.

“As the above appointments demonstrate, in addition to facilitating the growth and progress of the company, the changes we are making to the organization will enable us to provide professional growth opportunities for some of our most accomplished leaders. As a group, they embody the best of American Express -- smart, principled, compassionate leaders who demonstrate a strong will to win and are able to inspire people to great achievements. I know I can count on all of you to support them and help them succeed in their new roles.

“Additional communications regarding the changes I've outlined above will be forthcoming from Gary, Al and Ed.

“As we approach the start of a new era for the company, I am excited about our prospects and confident in our future. Today, we are operating from a position of great strength, thanks to the work of our thousands of employees around the world. Over the past few years, we have generated strong momentum and have become a consistent winner in the marketplace with one of the strongest brand names in the world. In doing so, we have built a solid foundation for long term growth and are producing excellent results in nearly all areas of our business. For that, I am deeply grateful to all of you.

But, we cannot afford to rest on these achievements. We face intense competitive pressures every day in every area of our business. We have a good understanding of the issues we face, and, as I have said on many occasions, we are focused on the need to continue increasing our flexibility to deal with uncertainty in the economic environment. We must continue to raise the bar on our performance and make changes that will keep us ahead of the competition and help us expand and deepen our customer relationships worldwide. Our goal is not just to win one or two championships, but to build a dynasty that delivers the best results, provides the best service to our customers, and develops the best talent -- year in and year out.

“The organization changes I am announcing today will help us do just that -- beat the competition, win more customers and broaden our leadership team.

“However, rearranging our organizational structure alone will not bring about the changes we need to ensure our ongoing success. It's the people and their commitment to take personal accountability for results that ultimately will determine whether or not we will be successful in achieving our aspirations for the new American Express Company.

“We need to continue to encourage creativity at all levels, embrace change, take appropriate risks, execute our strategies superbly and focus intensely on winning in the marketplace.

“I am confident that we have the resources, the capabilities and the talent to win in every market and in every business in which we compete. But we'll need the commitment, the drive and the contributions of everyone, in all of our businesses, if we are to become one of the world's most successful and admired growth companies with the most respected service brand in the world.

“I know I can count on each of you to help make that happen.”

American Express Company, founded in 1850, is a global travel, financial and network services provider.

Contacts:
Judy Tenzer
212.640.0555
Judy.G.Tenzer@aexp.com

Mike O'Neill
212.640.5951
Mike.O'Neill@aexp.com