Evaluation Essay on American Express

Introduction

American Express, also known as Amex, is a multinational company founded in 1850 in the United States of America that offers products and services in the banking and financial industries. Among its most known products in the financial sector are its charge card, credit card, and traveller's cheque. It is among the largest and oldest financial providing companies in the world and in 2018 it was ranked a position of No.86 in the Fortune 500 list of the largest US corporations by total revenue (Fortune 500, 2018).

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American Express in 2017 was also ranked 23rd place by Forbes Magazine in the most valuable brand in the world. It is so far ranked as the highest in the financial services industry. Its brand is worth US$24.5 billion and as of 2017; the financial company made US$2.6 billion and reported revenue of US$35.6 billion that year. These figures are an increase of 5.2 per cent from the previous fiscal cycle (Forbes, 2018).

Figure1. Amex Statistics as of 2018 (American Express, 2018)

One of the primary products of American Express is its card, which as of 2016 accounted to about 22.9 per cent of the total amount of credit card dollar transactions in the US alone. As of the close of 2017, the finance company has more than 112.8 million cards being used globally, with about 50 million cards being used in the US. Each card spends an annual average of about US$18,500.

In addition to that, the Amex is the world's largest issuer of card based on the amount of purchase and it is also currently in fourth place as one of largest card network based on circulation globally. The company has also partnered with both Google and Apple's mobile wallet system to facilitate easy payment of products and services online. American Express also has express card pay as well as non-card products such as traveller's checks, among other products.

The financier is also listed in the New York Stock Exchange, thus its ownership is on the basis of shares by institutional investors, who comprise of 85.5 per cent of the total holdings. These corporate investors include Vanguard Group, Berkshire Hathaway, State Street Corporation, Blackrock Incorporation, Dodge & Cox, among others. As of March 2019, the total number of shareholders was 1,613 with total shareholdings of 717,765,440 (Nasdaq, 2019).

Figure2. The Top 5 Holders of Institutional Holdings in Amex (Nasdaq, 2018)

References

Forbes. (2018). The World's Most Valuable Brands. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from Forbes: www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/#tab:rank_industry:Financial%20Services

Fortune 500. (2018). Fortune 500 List 2018. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from Fortune 500: http://fortune.com/fortune500/list/

Nasdaq. (2019, March 29). American Express Company Ownership Summary. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from Nasdaq: www.nasdaq.com/symbol/axp/ownership-summary