AMEX ISSUES DISMAL OUTLOOK ON BUSINESS TRAVEL SPENDING

American Express Co. warned Friday that business travel spending would not pick up before early 2022 after reporting underwhelming Q3 profit due to weak spending on travel and entertainment by its card users. In what appears to be a shift in strategy, the New yorkbased credit card issuer, for long a preferred choice of affluent Americans, walked back its cost-cutting target of nearly us$3 billion in 2020 and decided to spend heavily to add new card customers. “We’re all consistent in terms of how we feel about business travel, which is probably not going to (pick up) till late 2021, early 2022,” chief executive Stephen Squeri told analysts. Spending on its cards fell 19 per cent to us$248.7 billion in the quarter, with travel and entertainment related spending sliding 69 per cent from a year earlier.