American Express will cut about 5 per cent of its jobs worldwide, chief executive Stephen Squeri told analysts on the company's third-quarter earnings call on 23 October, CNBC reported. The company has not said how many of those jobs are in Australia, or when they go.
A reader at the company told The Aussie Corporate that "major redundancies" are "to come", and put the number at "thousands of jobs". The global cut runs to thousands. Whether Australian staff have been told anything about their own offices is not known.
What the company has said
The cut comes with a US$336 million restructuring charge, Squeri said on the call, according to CNBC. "To accelerate innovation and win we need to become a more agile and efficient organization," American Banker quoted him as saying. "I asked the senior leadership team to streamline organization and reduce layers to speed decision making."
Chief financial officer Christophe Le Caillec told CNBC the restructuring was to make the company "leaner, more agile, and also to prepare for AI."
The Associated Press reported that Squeri told investors the cuts were about efficiency and did not reflect a downturn in the business. It called them the company's first major job cuts in about a decade.
American Express employed about 76,800 people at 31 December 2025, with about 50,900 of them outside the United States, according to its annual report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in February. Five per cent of that is close to 3,900 jobs, which is American Banker's estimate. The Associated Press put it at about 3,500.
The company's earnings release of 23 October, filed with the regulator the same day, does not mention job cuts. It records a restructuring charge netted against the gain from selling the company's stake in Global Business Travel Group. It reports third-quarter net income of US$3.7 billion, up 28 per cent, and revenue of US$20.1 billion, up 9 per cent, and lifts the full-year earnings guidance. Neither the release nor the coverage of the call breaks the 5 per cent down by country or business unit.
The Australian business
American Express has been in Australia since 1954, when it opened a travel office in the David Jones store on Elizabeth Street in Sydney, its Australian website says. Its Australian head office is on Shelley Street in Barangaroo, with offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
The company does not publish how many people it employs in Australia, and its Australian website and Sydney careers page give no figure.
What is not known
How many Australian roles will go, from which teams, and on what timetable. The company has not said when the cuts start or finish. The restructuring charge was booked in the quarter to 30 September. American Express has not published anything about the cut on its Australian website.
The tip that started this story is on our Inside Track. If something in this story is wrong, tell us through our corrections form.
