American Express will cut jobs, impose hiring freeze

NEW YORK - American Express Co., the largest US credit card company by purchases, will slash 10 percent of its workforce to cut costs amid rising defaults as consumers squeezed by higher unemployment fail to repay their debts.

The lender will take a fourth-quarter charge of as much as $290 million for costs tied to eliminating 7,000 jobs, New York-based American Express said yesterday. The firm plans to save as much as $1.8 billion next year with the measures, which include a freeze on hiring and management raises and less spending for technology and marketing.

"Given the events of the last couple months, they're looking at being able to hold their ground through this crisis," said Michael Taiano, analyst at Sandler O'Neill & Partners with a "hold" rating on the company.

American Express has posted four straight quarterly profit declines and lost about half its market value this year as it set aside more for soured credit card debt. The company makes loans to consumers, exposing it to defaults fueled by more than 700,000 US job losses this year, unlike Visa Inc., which just processes payments and said yesterday that quarterly adjusted profit doubled to $448 million.

The job cuts "will help us to manage through one of the most challenging economic environments we've seen in many decades," chief executive Kenneth Chenault said.

The eliminations are mostly among managers and other workers who don't deal directly with customers, the company said.

Credit card defaults are "all but certain" to surpass post-recession peaks reached in 2003, Moody's Investors Service said in an Oct. 16 report.

Cardholders failed to repay loans in the third quarter at almost twice the rate of a year earlier, American Express said, and the company was forced to set aside $1.4 billion for loan losses.

"Recent volatility in the financial markets has reinforced our view that consumer and business sentiment is likely to deteriorate further, translating into weaker economies around the globe well into 2009," Chenault said in an Oct. 20 conference call. "Card member spending is likely to remain soft."

American Express used the Federal Reserve's commercial paper facility for the first time on Wednesday, joining a growing list of borrowers that have sold tens of billions of dollars of the short-term debt to the central bank as credit became more difficult to obtain.

Companies use commercial paper to finance daily expenses such as payroll and rent. The commercial paper market seized up when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy. General Electric Co., the biggest buyer of commercial paper, and New York-based Morgan Stanley have also signed up for the program, which was announced Oct. 7.