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American Express Company

Financial Services / PaymentsFounded 1850
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Company data updated: September 2026

Leadership History

American Express: CEO History

5 leaders · 1960 to present

Who is the CEO of American Express?

Stephen Squeri is the CEO of American Express, in the role since 2018. The first chief executive was Howard L. Clark Sr., from 1960.

Current CEO
Stephen Squeri (since 2018)
First CEO
Howard L. Clark Sr. (1960)
Leaders documented
5
Founded
1850
NameRoleFromToYears in role
Stephen J. SqueriChairman and Chief Executive Officer2018Present8
Kenneth ChenaultChairman and Chief Executive Officer2001201817
Harvey GolubChairman and Chief Executive Officer199320018
James D. Robinson IIIChairman and Chief Executive Officer1977199316
Howard L. Clark Sr.President and Chief Executive Officer1960197717
Who was CEO of American Express before Stephen J. Squeri?
Kenneth Chenault was CEO of American Express from 2001 to 2018, before Stephen J. Squeri took over in 2018.

Company Overview

American Express is a payments company that sells access to its own card members. It does not rent its network to thousands of issuing banks the way Visa and Mastercard do; it issues the cards, signs the merchants and keeps the discount fee. In FY2025 it carried $1,897.0 billion of network volumes, had 152.8 million cards in force worldwide including 86.6 million it issues itself, and reported $72.2 billion in total revenues net of interest expense. The premium lineup runs from the Green Card up through the Gold Card at $325 a year, the Platinum Card at $895 after its September 2025 refresh, and the invitation-only Centurion Card, whose fee the company does not publish. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York. Before becoming a global symbol of wealth and credit, the corporation actually launched in Buffalo, New York as an express mail dispatch business, rapidly pivoting into financial services as cross-country travel exploded.

Stephen J. Squeri

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

2018 – Present

8 years (current)

Key Decisions & Impact

Squeri, who grew up in Queens, New York, earned both his bachelor's degree (1981) and MBA (1986) from Manhattan College and joined American Express in 1985 during his final year of graduate school, spending over three decades in roles including CIO, group president of Global Corporate Services, and vice chairman before becoming CEO in February 2018, giving him one of the longest internal tenures of any American Express chief executive before reaching the top job.

Legacy

Stephen Squeri took over from Kenneth Chenault in February 2018 and has run the most financially productive period in the company's history, with FY2025 total revenues net of interest expense of $72.2 billion and net income of $10.8 billion, both records. His central bet was to raise prices while raising benefits faster: net card fees grew from $7,255 million in 2023 to $9,993 million in 2025, and in September 2025 he repriced the United States Consumer and Business Platinum Cards from $695 to $895 in what the company calls its largest ever investment in a card refresh. He also pushed acquisition toward Millennial and Gen Z customers, who now account for more than 60 percent of new global consumer accounts, bought dining platforms Resy in 2019 and Tock in 2024, added expense management software with Center in 2025, and steered the company through the collapse of travel spending in 2020 by shifting card benefits toward everyday categories.

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Kenneth Chenault

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

2001 – 2018

17 years

Key Decisions & Impact

Chenault, born in Mineola, New York in 1951, studied history at Bowdoin College and earned a law degree from Harvard Law School before working at a law firm and then, from 1979 to 1981, as a consultant at Bain & Company, joining American Express in September 1981 as director of strategic planning. His two-decade rise through the company's card and merchant-services divisions culminated in his 2001 appointment as CEO, making him one of the first African American chief executives of a Fortune 500 company just weeks before the September 11 attacks devastated Amex's headquarters-adjacent lower Manhattan operations and travel-dependent business.

Legacy

Kenneth Chenault led American Express for 17 years through two severe shocks: the September 11 attacks in 2001, which hit its lower Manhattan operations and its travel-dependent business weeks after he became chief executive, and the 2008 financial crisis, during which the Federal Reserve approved the company's conversion to a bank holding company in November 2008, giving it deposit funding and access to Federal Reserve facilities while commercial paper markets were frozen. He built out digital capabilities, expanded the international franchise and managed the shift from pure charge cards to a mix of charge and revolving credit, which widened the addressable market. He was one of the first African American chief executives of a Dow Jones Industrial Average company.

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Harvey Golub

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

1993 – 2001

8 years

Key Decisions & Impact

Golub, born in 1939, earned a bachelor's degree from New York University after attending Cornell and became a senior partner at McKinsey & Company before American Express recruited him in 1983 as president and CEO of its IDS Financial Services subsidiary (later spun off as Ameriprise Financial). He was named American Express vice chairman in 1990, giving him a management-consulting outsider's perspective on the parent company's problems when he was elevated to succeed James Robinson as CEO in 1993 following Robinson's ouster.

Legacy

Harvey Golub inherited a company left unfocused and financially weaker by James Robinson III's financial conglomerate strategy. His main contribution was disciplined divestiture: he sold the Shearson brokerage to Primerica's Smith Barney and The Boston Company to Mellon Bank in 1993, spun off Lehman Brothers in 1994, and started the process that ended in the Ameriprise Financial spinoff. That let the company refocus on payments and travel, and he reinvested there, buying the corporate travel operations of Thomas Cook for $375 million in 1994 and rebuilding merchant coverage and card member acquisition programs that had been neglected. Return on equity improved materially over his tenure.

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James D. Robinson III

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

1977 – 1993

16 years

Key Decisions & Impact

Robinson, born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1935 to a prominent banking family that included relatives who ran an Atlanta bank, attended Woodberry Forest School and Georgia Tech before earning an MBA from Harvard in 1961 and serving in the US Navy. He rose through American Express to become CEO by 1977 at age 41, before his 'financial supermarket' acquisition strategy of the 1980s ultimately led the board to force him out in 1993.

Legacy

James Robinson III presided over American Express during a period of both genuine growth and serious strategic overreach. His legitimate accomplishments included expanding the company's global reach, growing the card member base substantially, and introducing important new card products including the Gold Card and Optima Card. However, his financial conglomerate strategy acquiring Shearson/American Express, Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and IDS Financial Services in an attempt to create a 'financial supermarket' proved misguided and organizationally difficult, producing years of financial underperformance and management distraction that ultimately cost Robinson his position when the board replaced him with Harvey Golub in 1993.

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Howard L. Clark Sr.

President and Chief Executive Officer

1960 – 1977

17 years

Key Decisions & Impact

Clark decided to honor the salad oil warehouse receipts rather than shelter behind the subsidiary's limited liability, a choice that protected the brand and, together with the depressed share price, drew Warren Buffett's investment partnership into the stock in 1964.

Legacy

Howard Clark became chief executive in 1960 and ran American Express until 1977. He inherited a charge card business that was losing money two years after launch and pushed it to profitability by repositioning it as a premium product, raising the merchant discount rate and tightening underwriting, and he added the Gold Card in 1966 and the green plastic card in 1969. He also carried the company through the 1963 salad oil scandal, when its field warehousing subsidiary issued receipts for vegetable oil that turned out to be largely seawater, exposing American Express to roughly $150 million in claims that were eventually settled for about $60 million.

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Challenges & Strategic Context

American Express faces four pressures that its FY2025 numbers do not resolve. The first is the payment interface. Its FY2025 Form 10-K warns that companies controlling the point of sale, digital wallets, agentic commerce and mobile applications could suppress or degrade the use of its products, or demand payments to participate; if the card behind the wallet becomes invisible, the premium positioning behind the $895 Platinum fee loses some of its point. The second is acceptance. Amex reached what it calls virtual parity with Visa and Mastercard in the United States through the OptBlue program launched in 2014, but coverage internationally still trails, and the higher discount rate is the reason smaller merchants decline it. The third is regulatory and competitive repricing: proposals to cap credit card interest rates, interchange legislation modelled on European rules, and the new United States stablecoin framework all appear as risks in the 10-K. The fourth is cyclicality. Travel and entertainment was 26 percent of billed business in 2025, and the company relies on a customer base concentrated in the United States, which accounted for about 79 percent of card member loans and receivables at the end of 2025. Against that, the business earned $10.8 billion in 2025 with a 2.0 percent net write-off rate, so these are margin and growth questions rather than solvency questions.

American Express CEO and Leadership FAQ

Who is Stephen J. Squeri and what has defined his leadership as CEO of American Express?

Stephen J. Squeri became chief executive in February 2018 after more than three decades at the company, including roles as chief information officer and group president of Global Corporate Services. He repriced and enriched the premium card lineup, took net card fees from $7,255 million in 2023 to $9,993 million in 2025, pushed acquisition toward Millennial and Gen Z customers and delivered record FY2025 revenue of $72.2 billion.

Who was Kenneth I. Chenault and what was his impact as long-time CEO of American Express?

Kenneth Chenault was chief executive from 2001 to 2018. He took over weeks before the September 11 attacks hit the company's lower Manhattan operations and travel business, led it through the 2008 financial crisis, and oversaw its November 2008 conversion into a Federal Reserve regulated bank holding company.

Who was Harvey Golub and how did he reshape American Express in the 1990s?

Harvey Golub served as CEO from 1993 to 2001, refocusing Amex on its core card and travel businesses by divesting non-core financial units (Lehman Brothers, Boston Company) and establishing the Global Network Services (GNS) partnership model.

Who was James D. Robinson III and what was his 'financial supermarket' vision in the 1980s?

James D. Robinson III served as CEO from 1977 to 1993, aggressively expanding Amex into a diversified financial supermarket through acquisitions including Shearson Loeb Rhoades, Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and E.F. Hutton.

Who was Howard L. Clark Sr. and how did he lead American Express in the 1960s and 1970s?

Howard L. Clark Sr. was chief executive from 1960 to 1977. He took the loss-making charge card business to profitability by repositioning it as a premium product, added the Gold Card in 1966 and the green plastic card in 1969, and carried the company through the 1963 salad oil scandal, honoring warehouse receipts issued by its own subsidiary rather than sheltering behind them.

Who was Ralph Reed and what payment innovations did he introduce at American Express?

Ralph Reed served as President from 1944 to 1960, recognizing the post-war global travel boom, expanding Amex travel offices across post-war Europe, and officially launching the very first paper American Express card in October 1958.

Who was James C. Fargo and how did he lead American Express in the late 19th century?

James C. Fargo (brother of co-founder William Fargo) served as President from 1881 to 1914, overseeing the invention of the American Express Travelers Cheque in 1891 and the company's expansion into international financial remittances.

How does the American Express Board of Directors govern executive compensation and risk?

Amex's Board consists of independent business leaders who link executive compensation strictly to multi-year total shareholder return, return on equity, revenue growth, credit loss containment, and customer Net Promoter Scores.

Who is the CEO of American Express?

Stephen Squeri serves as CEO, leading the company's successful strategy to aggressively recruit younger Millennial and Gen Z cardholders.

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Content is for informational purposes only. Not financial advice. Data sourced from SEC filings, annual reports, and public records. See our full disclaimer and methodology.