Amex Europe Merges Card, Biz Travel

<B> Amex Europe Merges Card, Biz Travel</B>

By Amon Cohen

American Express has restructured its business travel and corporate card operation in Europe two years after completing its last shake-up this side of the Atlantic.

The reshuffle follows the early retirement of European head of business travel Maria Lilja. She remains non-executive chairman of Nyman & Schultz, Amex's Swedish business travel subsidiary, but will have no further day-to-day role in the organization.

Lilja has not been replaced directly. Oversight of business travel, including profit and loss responsibility, has been passed to senior vice president and general manager Vahan Eminian. He is now in charge of all three corporate service businesses for the region, the other two being the corporate card and purchasing card. Eminian has been with Amex for 22 years.

Business travel and corporate card sales also have been combined under the aegis of Jean-Luc Durant, who has had responsibility for the latter for the past five years. Sales personnel will be told of their reallocated responsibilities within the next 90 days. "We don't anticipate any redundancies," said an Amex spokesperson.

Travel and card account management also will be merged, but probably not for another 12 to 18 months. "Clients will be serviced by our existing teams for the forseeable future, but they will eventually have one point of contact," said the spokesperson.

Sales and account management are run jointly for the card and travel in most other parts of the world. "By combining the corporate card and corporate travel, we are facing our customers with one voice when we look at supplying them with a travel management solution," Durant said.

The company also has promoted Pearse Reynolds to vice president of travel operations for Europe. He is in charge of "service delivery," better known as distribution. Reynolds joined three years ago from Deloitte & Touche as head of corporate travel reengineering, and has been responsible for developing the self-booking product AXI and call center operations outside the United States.