Good morning. Welcome to our 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I am Ken Chenault, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, and I will be presiding at this meeting. I'm very pleased you could join us today. With me on the dais is Carol Swartz, Secretary of the Company, who will assist me in conducting the meeting.
Before we begin, I remind you that the order of business and the rules of the meeting are set forth in the printed agenda handed out when you came in. Now before I comment on the company's financial performance, Carol will read a statement called for under the securities laws.
The discussion today contains certain forward looking statements about the company's future financial performance and business prospects, which are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward looking statements are set forth in the presentation slides for today's meeting, as well as the company's 2015 10 ks and other reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The discussion today also contains certain non GAAP financial measures. Information relating to comparable GAAP financial measures may be found in today's presentation slides as well as the earnings materials for prior periods that may be discussed, all of which are posted on our website at ir.americanexpress.com. We encourage you to review that information in conjunction with today's discussion.
Thanks, Carol. As I typically do, today I'll give you an update on our 2015 results and our performance to date in 2016. Let me start with 2015. As we discussed in our annual report, 2015 was a challenging year for the company. Our earnings growth was below our expectations.
Our stock trailed the broader markets. And on a personal note, we suffered the loss of our friend and President, Ed Gilligan. We faced a number of economic headwinds during this year, including declining GDP forecasts, a strengthening dollar, falling fuel prices, regulatory changes and increased competitive activity, particularly in the co brand space. We clearly recognize the changes and the issues in the marketplace, whether it's new technologies or changes in consumer behavior and needs. We know what we need to do and we're addressing our challenges with a strong sense of urgency.
And importantly, we know the opportunities that can accelerate our growth and we're continuing to invest in them. For 2015, we generated revenues of $32,800,000,000 Expenses were down 1% as a result of strong operating expense controls, leading to reported EPS of 5 $5 A number of factors made our year over year comparisons more complex, but our underlying business does show continued growth. Adjusted revenues rose 4%, excluding the impact of foreign exchange, a 2014 gain on the sale of our investment in Concur Technologies and revenues from Business Travel, which now operates as a joint venture. We generated a return on average equity of 24% and last year we returned more than $5,000,000,000 to our shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Turning to our business metrics, our FX adjusted billings growth of 6% remains strong given the global environment.
Excluding our Costco and JetBlue portfolios, which were held for sale, our loan balances grew by 7%, a rate that was ahead of many large card issuers, while our credit metrics remain near historic lows. Operating expenses declined by 3% for the full year, well below our targeted objective of holding expense growth to 3%. We achieved this while still investing appropriately in key areas such as control, compliance and infrastructure. Across our businesses and across the company, we have taken positive actions to improve our performance and position the company for future growth. Here are some examples over the past 12 months to 18 months.
We were proactive in the co brand space, accelerating contract talks with key partners. We focused on those relationships where we can earn attractive returns and provide strong customer value, which led us to deals with Delta, Starwood, Cathay Pacific, British Air and Charles Schwab. We did not, however, renew our agreement with Costco because we were unable to reach terms that would have made economic sense for our company and our shareholders. This certainly has a significant short term impact, but we continue to believe it was in our best long term interests. We contained operating expenses and reorganized many areas of our business.
Now we're set to take cost reduction to the next level, through the $1,000,000,000 improvement program we announced earlier this year. We ramped up spending on card member acquisition and brought in 7,700,000 new cards in the U. S. Last year. Our investments here are paying off and now we're working to turn those new accounts into spending growth.
We stepped up investments in our international business with strong results, adjusted for foreign exchange and the ending of our relationship with Costco in Canada. International bill business grew by 12% last year. We expanded our merchant network, adding more than 1,200,000 new merchants globally in 2015. With our Op Blue program, we are continuing our efforts to move toward parity coverage with the other card networks in the U. S.
By 2019. We grew our lending business faster than the market, while maintaining our industry best credit performance. Adjusted loans rose by 7% worldwide and 10% in the U. S. In 2015.
We'll continue to deepen relationships with current customers and target new lending prospects. We expanded our digital capabilities and partnerships to better serve our customers. Actions here included the launch of Express Pay and integrations with Airbnb, Uber, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay. We streamlined our management structure creating integrated commercial and merchant teams to help accelerate our growth. While new products and services have been a key focus for us, we haven't lost sight of our heritage and as such, we continue to strengthen our customer service capabilities.
New and improved tools along with the incredible service ethos and commitment of our customer care professionals and travel counselors allow us to fulfill the promise of our brand each and every day. Because of this, our card member recommend to a friend scores have improved by approximately 63% since 2009, reaching an all time high at the end of 2015. One other important business item relates to our appeal in the Department of Justice lawsuit. As a reminder, the Department of Justice wants to ban terms in our merchant contracts that protect our card products from discrimination at the point of sale. There was an encouraging development in December when an appeals court ordered a temporary stay of a lower court judgment against our company and we are now awaiting the final ruling by the appeals court.
Now despite these areas of progress across our businesses, our total shareholder return has not been at a level we would want declining 24% in 2015. This performance was disappointing. It was not what we or you would have liked. Over a 5 year period, we are now in line with the performance of the S and P and the S and P Financials after several years of outperforming these benchmarks. I can assure you that our goal is to continue to invest in and grow our businesses so that this performance changes.
Now let me turn to 2016. In the Q1, we generated $1.45 of EPS in line with our expectations. This represented a decline of 2% from last year, reflecting our elevated investment spending as well as a restructuring charge related to our expense initiatives. Revenues grew by 4% adjusted for foreign exchange and our return on average equity was 24%. Worldwide card billings grew by 6% on an FX adjusted basis, up slightly from the 5% growth we saw last quarter.
Worldwide loans grew by 11%, adjusted for FX and excluding the JetBlue and Costco portfolios. Our global net write off rate was 1.5%, an indicator of excellent credit quality. And finally, our capital ratios continue to be exceptionally strong and well above regulatory requirements. In closing my presentation, let me just say a few things. As I've discussed with you before, my focus is to appropriately position our company for future growth.
Our business model and our assets, capabilities and relationships are unique in the industry and I believe they can serve as a foundation for growth. We have sound strategies in place with excellent people implementing them. While we continue to face substantial competitive and environmental challenges, I'm confident we can take advantage of the range of growth opportunities we have across our businesses. In 2016 and beyond, we're moving forward on transforming our 166 year old company for the future and extending our leadership within payments, services and commerce. With our commitment to shareholder value, our financial strength, our unique competitive advantages, the strength of our brand, and most of all, the quality, character and commitment of our people.
I believe we're more than up for this challenge. Thank you. Let's now turn to the official business of our meeting. Because this is a meeting of shareholders, only shareholders should speak and the comments should relate to the company's business. To permit shareholders who could not be here today to listen to these proceedings, we are providing a live audio webcast of today's meeting.
As Chairman, I will be responsible for the conduct of today's meeting. In doing so, I will seek to have an orderly informative session in which we get our business done, complete the voting and tabulating and give shareholders the opportunity to ask questions that are relevant to the company's business. To accomplish this, I ask that each shareholder keep his or her remarks brief and to the point and not interrupt other shareholders. Please keep your remarks to 2 minutes unless you are presenting a proposal. Our goal is to assure that all persons who wish to speak get a chance to do so in an orderly way.
Privacy considerations prevent me from discussing at this meeting questions relating to any specific card number. If you need help with any personal card matters, please go to the table outside of the room after the meeting adjourns. We have made arrangements for you to speak with our customer care professionals. Let me now introduce our slate of directors. I will ask each to stand briefly while I mention their names.
Please hold your applause until all have been introduced. With us today are Charlene Barshevsky, Ursula Burns, Peter Chernin, Anne L'Orbignon, Michael Levitt, Ted Leonsis, Rick Levin, Sam Palmisano, Bob Walter, Ron Williams. 1 of our directors, Dan Vesella, could not be with us today. I want to ask Ralph de la Vega to stand. Mr.
De la Vega is Vice Chairman of AT and T and the CEO of AT and T Business Solutions and International. He also leads AT and T's Integrated Business Solutions Group, which serves more than 3,500,000 business customers in 200 countries and territories and nearly all the Fortune 1,000 firms globally. We are very pleased to welcome Ralph to our Board. Please join me in applauding this outstanding group of Directors. And with us today is Lisa Sawicki, a partner of our audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
All right, Carol, let's get on with the formalities.
Ken, I present a copy of the notice of the annual meeting of shareholders dated March 21, 2016, and affidavits showing that notice of this meeting was duly given. A copy of the notice and affidavits will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. All shareholders of record at the close of business on March 4, 2016 are entitled to vote at this meeting. A certified list of the company's shareholders of record is present at today's meeting and will remain open for inspection during the meeting. The minutes of the last annual meeting of shareholders are also here and are available for inspection.
The company has designated Peter Deskevich and James U. Forle of Broadridge Financial Solutions to act as inspectors of election. The inspectors have taken their oaths to faithfully and impartially execute their duties.
All right, Carol. Do we have a quorum and may we proceed?
The inspectors of election have determined that holders of at least 845,000,000 shares, representing over 88% of the common stock of the company entitled to vote at this meeting are present or are represented by proxy and constitute a quorum.
Fine. The meeting is now duly convened for the purpose of Please limit any comment at this time to matters relating to the proposals. We will have time in the agenda later for general questions. If you have already voted by proxy and do not wish to change your vote, you need to do nothing further. For those of you who haven't voted by proxy or for those of you that wish to change your vote, ballots will be handed out to you.
Will any shareholder who wants a ballot please raise your hand? The ushers will come to give you a ballot. If you are voting today by ballot, please vote on all items as submission of a ballot will revoke your prior proxy. We will now introduce the proposals. The first item of business is the election of the Board of Directors.
I propose the election of the 13 persons whose names and biographies appear on page 15 to 21 of the proxy statement to be elected as directors of the company, to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified.
The next matter is the proposal to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers to audit the company's accounts in 2016. The company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2016. And the Board asked the shareholders to ratify the committee's appointment. Carol, would you introduce the resolution?
I offer the resolution appearing on Page 38 of the proxy statement ratifying the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm to audit the accounts of the company and subsidiaries for 2016.
The next matter is the advisory vote on executive compensation. Carol, would you introduce the resolution?
I offer the advisory resolution to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed pursuant to Item 402 of Regulation SK, which appears as Item 3 on Page 42 of the proxy statement.
The next matter is the proposal to approve the company's 2016 incentive compensation plan. Carol, would you introduce the resolution?
I offer the resolution to approve the American Express Company 2016 incentive compensation plan, which appears as item 4 on page 74 of the proxy statement.
The next proposal is submitted by the New York City Controller on behalf of various New York City funds. The proposal requests the Board to adopt a policy for annual disclosure of EEO-one data. It appears on 83 of the proxy statement. Cara Wallace, a representative of the proponent will now introduce the proposal.
Good morning. I'm Cara Wallace, Chief Diversity Officer of the New York City Comptroller's Office. And I'm here on behalf of the New York City Comptroller, Scott M. Stringer and the trustees of the New York City Pension Fund. The funds currently own 1,800,000 shares of American Express.
I am pleased to introduce the funds proposal asking the company to disclose its EEO-one data that breaks down its workforce by race and gender and which it currently provides to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As long term investors and consistent with the fiduciary responsibility of the Boards of Trustees to protect the retirement investments of fund members, The funds actively pursue the adoption and effective implementation of good corporate governance and corporate social responsibility reforms at companies in which they are invested. Accordingly, while we commend the company for adopting diversity related policies, the best way to evaluate the effective implementation of these policies and the company's commitment to diversity is to examine the data. All the adequate details of which the company currently does not disclose. Our concerns with the company's disclosure includes the following.
American Express had improved its disclosure this year by providing information across different professional categories on these 3 groups, non minority, minority and women. And while we appreciate the move towards the improved disclosure, the move is not enough. Our concern is that by lumping all of the minority categories together, we know nothing about what diversity is like amongst this category. Number 2, the company claims that the E01 categories do not adequately account for company or industry specific factors and there is therefore reluctant to provide this information. We would like to suggest that American Express take the relevant EEO-one categories and further break out such categories that better tell its story on diversity.
Finally, the diversity table that American Express now provides is not quickly available on the diversity section of its website. One has to go through a number of clicks before getting there. We would like to suggest that the company make it more readily viewable on its global diversity page. Finally, American Express is becoming a laggard in adequate disclosure of its EEO-one data. Its peer Capital One Financial, is expected to begin disclosing EE01 details in its 2016 CSR report.
In addition, other companies in the financial sector have begun disclosing within the past few years. These include Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. We strongly urge American Express to reveal its EEO-one data to reassure shareholders that it is leveraging diversity to enhance long term value creation and minimize reputational harm. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Wallace for your comments. The Board of Directors reasons for opposing this proposal appear on Pages 8485 of the proxy statement. The next proposal is from Stephen Matthew Schull requesting an annual report on privacy, data security and government requests. It appears on Page 86 of the proxy statement.
Do we have a representative to introduce the proposal.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Board and fellow shareholders. My name is Specifically, we are asking Specifically, we are asking the Board to publish a report on consumer privacy, data security and requests for customer information by U. S. And foreign governments.
As anyone who reads or listens to the news media is aware, privacy and data security are among the most business and social issues of our time. They are the focus of national and international discussion and debate, and they are addressed as top level priorities by heads of government and legislatures around the world. Our company's past and future growth is dependent on personal information from our customers. As you know, major hacks of confidential customer data, often involving credit card data and disclosures of extensive government surveillance, reportedly involving requests of data from credit card companies have heightened public concern over these issues and increased potential legal, financial and reputational risk for the company. Examples of this are what's happened in the recent past, companies like Sony and health insurer Anthem.
In order for shareholders to have the necessary understanding of how American Express is responding to these issues, we believe the company should issue a report providing much greater detail. In fact, most leading consumer facing Internet companies, companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo! Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as the leading U. S. Telecommunications carriers including AT and T and Verizon now regularly published transparency reports detailing government and law enforcement requests for confidential customer data.
The recent experience that Apple has had with the FBI and the Justice Department regarding their demands for backdoor keys to encrypted data highlights how complex and sensitive the issue can be. As one of the world's leading financial services companies, American Express, we believe, has a duty to protect both customer privacy and the security of customer data. A failure to do so carries, we believe, significant business risks and these are outlined in the company's 10 ks disclosures as including potentially significant regulatory actions, government investigations, litigations, fines, sanctions and damage to our global reputation and the brand. As noted in the company's opposition statement, American Express has been recognized as one of the most trusted companies for privacy. And for this exact reason, we believe a shift in perception could limit future growth.
Given how important brand value is to our company's growth and the risks that data privacy and security present, we believe our company's current level of disclosure is inadequate. In closing, I'd like to urge and invite shareholders to support the proposals and invite the company to meet with us and discuss this strategically important consideration and important issue. Thank you for consideration, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Connors for your comment. The Board of Directors' reasons for opposing this proposal appear on Page 8788 of the proxy statement. The next proposal is from Myra Young requesting adoption of action by written consent. It appears on Page 88 of the proxy statement.
Mary Vaccari will now introduce the proposal on her behalf.
The record, I'm Mary Vicari of New York City and here on the proxy of Walden Asset Management. I rise to move Resolution 7 on behalf of Ms. Myra Young of Elk Grove, California, the resolution sponsor. I do this as a courtesy to Ms. Young.
Ms. Young and her husband are one of a number of individual investors who press for governance reform with companies on several important governance issues. While we are addressing good corporate governance on behalf Walden Asset Management and many institutional investors, including the religious investors who are members of the Interface Center on Corporate Responsibility where I work, I commend American Express for its longstanding commitment to board diversity, including the inclusion of 5 women and people of color on our board. Not only do we have an exceptionally well qualified board of leaders, American Express has been a leader for years championing racial and gender diversity among our directors. This is recognized by an increasing number of institutional investors as good governance which protects long term shareholder value.
We stand as an example to other companies when only 19% of Board members in the S and P are women. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Vicori for your comments. The Board of Directors reasons for opposing this proposal appears on Page 8889 of the proxy statement. Our proxy contains a proposal that was submitted by Walden Asset Management and several other proponents relating to a report on lobbying disclosures. This proposal has been withdrawn by the proponents.
Mr. Tim Smith from Walden Asset Management is here to address the withdrawal of the proposal. Mary, you're going to do that? Okay. All right.
Again, my name is Mary Vicari. I'm the proxy of Walden Asset Management, who along with several other shareholders are the sponsor of this resolution. Walden and its parent company, Boston Trust 525,509 shares of American Express. This resolution has been filed with approximately 50 companies this year, asking companies to be transparent about the ways in which company funds are spent on lobbying, both directly and through third parties like trade associations. This resolution is not a criticism of American Express per se, but it does raise an ethical dilemma for the company.
What does the company do when it has strong policy on the environment, but a trade association in which it is a prominent member acts in ways that contradict its position and values? One example is American Express's prominent role in the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. I'm sure American Express receives good service from the Chamber, but they also have taken a key role in attacking the EPA's Clean Power Plan by suing the EPA and working to block forward action on climate change in the United States.
As a dues paying member of the chamber, we would hope American Express would speak out urging the chamber to end this campaign. But I have a special responsibility today. On behalf of Walden Asset Management and the resolution sponsors, we are withdrawing this resolution from a vote and wish instead to commend the company. Since last year, as you can see on the company website, our company has broadened lists the amount spent on lobbying. American Express has provided meaningful information that makes us a leader in lobbying transparency.
We would hope peer companies in the financial industry follow suit. Walden Asset Management commends the company for its disclosure and is pleased to withdraw the resolution today, making a vote unnecessary.
Thank you for your comments, Ms. Macquarie, and thank you very much for your support. And we've appreciated the conversations that we've had with Walden Asset Management. The next proposal is from Kenneth Steiner relating to a policy for an independent Board Chairman. It appears on Page 92 of the proxy statement.
Ms. Vicari again will now introduce the proposal.
Again, for the record, my name is Mary Vicari here on the proxy of Walden Asset Management. I rise to present Proposal 9 for a vote. I do so as a courtesy to the sponsor, Mr. Ken Steiner of Great Neck, Long Island. As shareholders will see, this resolution asks our Board to take steps when we choose a new CEO to separate the roles of Chair and CEO and appoint an independent Director as Chair of Board.
This proposal is being proposed to numerous companies as a change in governance. In fact, according to ISS, 53% of the S and P, 1500 companies separate these two roles. This resolution is not framed as a criticism of American Express or our top leadership. The rationale for this proposal is that a separation of these two key roles is good for the governance of the company and leads to vigorous oversight of management. It also reduces the extremely heavy workload of a CEO.
Many large institutional investors like CalPERS support this change as helpful to the company and in the best interest of shareholders. I move this resolution for a vote by shareholders.
Thank you, Ms. Fakari. The Board of Directors' reasons for opposing this proposal appear on Page 93 of the proxy statement. If there are no other comments pertaining to the voting matters at this point in the meeting, I ask that you please turn in your ballots, so we can tabulate the votes on the proposals introduced today. The ushers will now collect the ballots.
If you have brought your proxy to the meeting and haven't turned it in, you may do so now. Has Everyone who wishes to vote having voted, I declare the polls closed and ask the inspectors of election to collect and tabulate the ballots. I will now take general questions while the investor of election count the votes.
Yes. Philip Berman, Portfolio Manager and Shareholders, some comments and questions together. Despite the temporary low in earnings and stock price, it should be emphasized that credit card lending overall remains a very profitable business and AXP's credit card portfolio in particular has fared better through the financial crisis up to the current date. Fortunately for us at AXP, we've had Ken Chenault move into action to compensate right after the Ed Gilligan tragedy. Now some questions.
For future AXP joint ventures that develop such as Costco AXP, can we amend our future partnership agreements so that our partners would only be able to terminate the agreement upon a more substantial advance notice to AXP and also amend our agreement with directors and upper level management that once they sign on to serve at AXP, there has to be a more substantial time before they can go to any competitor.
Let me address your questions and your comments. Very much appreciate your support of our strategy and the company's leadership. With respect to the Costco situation, obviously, one has to engage in negotiations on commercial terms. But I think what's very important here is that we made the judgment that it was important for us to proactively understand where we stood in the co brand environment, because what you want to do is know your situation early, so that you can plan. And so we in fact accelerated our conversations with all of our co brand partners, including Costco.
And I think that's very important to understand because we did not want to wait till the last minute. So we were very conscious and we thought it was the right call to in fact initiate early conversations so that we would have a longer period of time to plan. And that was a judgment call that we made. We have put in procedures relative to our executive retention. We have clawbacks if they go to a competitor.
We have a time period where they cannot in fact go after people at the company. Obviously, we're not alone that in this day and age there is very strong competition for talent and for certain people. Companies are willing to pay substantial dollars above and beyond the clawbacks that we have in place. But rest assured, Mr. Berman, this is an area that we continue to be very, very focused on.
We believe we have very talented people that we have a strong bench in the company that we've been able to move on. But nevertheless, talent is an appropriate concern and a strong concern for the company to retain it.
Okay. What is the potential loss from the Starwood Marriott's deal and are we proactively doing anything to retain that account?
What we've said with respect to Starwood is, it's really business as usual, but in the sense that the Starwood co branded card is one of the most attractive products out there and we think we have been instrumental in improving the value. It is too early to speculate what the impact will be. From a material standpoint, I think it's roughly 4% of our billings. Yes, 4% overall, 2% of billings. And so it is not a major portion of our billings.
Nevertheless, I want to be very, very clear here. We value our relationship with Starwood. We value our relationship with Marriott. We are very pleased with the performance and we are going to be focused very hard on doing the best for Marriott Starwood customers and doing the best for Marriott and Starwood. So we're very focused on that.
How much are you relying on data analytics and revamping our rewards program for ultimately boosting up our earnings and stock price? And do you have a new coordinated strategy to somehow convince our long established card members to increase their lending capacity?
Yes. Let me answer your question first with lending and then I'll go into what we're doing with respect to rewards and loyalty. What we believe and the way we characterize it is that we've been growing our lending business at substantial levels above and beyond the average growth rates for the industry for the last several years. We believe we can continue that strategy. We also have been able to achieve very low write off rates vastly superior to the industry overall.
We believe we have card members in fact who are borrowing with our competitors. We have traditionally been known as a pay in full product. And what we have always been focused on as a company is meeting our customer needs and our customers have borrowing needs. And we believe that the data and analytics that we have created our closed loop, the information that we have on the merchant side and the consumer side, we have been able to very effectively grow in the lending business and that's why we have superior performance in credit and fraud. Now from a reward standpoint, as you know, Membership Rewards is the largest rewards program in the world.
We also have a wide variety of reward products and services meeting different customer segment needs. And what we've also done is from a digital standpoint, we've entered into partnerships with Uber, with Airbnb, with Amazon, giving card members access easily on checkout to earn and redeem points. So we are very focused on constantly innovating and re inventing in the reward space and that will continue, let me assure you, to be a very high priority.
Now that Plenty has a short term track record, how would you personally rate its performance as you expected or better?
I'm pleased with the performance of Plenty. It has become a global program. We acquired loyalty partner in 2011. As you know, we introduced Plenty into the U. S.
We've been very pleased with the progress, pleased with the revenue growth. We're investing in this business. We think frankly it fits under the category of not just rewards, but performance marketing, because it helps our partners, our retail partners, different companies who want to improve their marketing and sales grow. And so we think this is a very important extension. What we also like is it's a closed loop business and that's very attractive to us.
One more question. As we've been technically classified as a bank for some time, would you ever consider buying one of the recently now publicly available financial banks to go beyond our Centurion Bank?
I think at the end of the day, obviously, I am not going to speculate about specific acquisitions. What I would say is that I believe we have a range of opportunities in our existing businesses. As I've said, we're certainly open to inorganic growth as well as organic growth. And what we'd have to look at is to fit with our overall model and we'd have to obviously analyze the overall economics. Thank you very much Mr.
Bergman. Yes.
Yes. Good morning. Mr. Chairman, my name is Howard Tanbau, I'm a shareholder. I have four questions.
I may ask them 1 at a time or you want me to ask all at once?
Why don't you do one at a time?
Okay, great. You mentioned in your introduction about you touched upon the strength of the dollar and specifically can you quantify how much the strength of the dollar has cost the impact in terms of earnings per share on the bottom line?
I don't think we've given out the exact amount, Jeff. You can from a disclosure standpoint, you can say.
We've given a number. If you go look at some of our SEC and other disclosures, it's generally in recent years been a couple of points of EPS growth. And my next two questions relate in overseas, specifically in Europe. As you're aware, the British are going to have a referendum to secede from the European Union. And also, and another question related to that, the European Union, as you know, is pretty much in crisis, thanks to the migrant crisis.
So my question is, if the British citizens vote to secede from the European Union and if the European Union implodes, no thanks to the migrant crisis, and the currency, the euro is questionable whether it survives, how what kind of impact will that have in terms of this company and what kind of strategy do you are going to implement in preparation if that should occur in the future?
So the first thing I would say, let's all hope that that does not happen. Let me say very clearly what is important when you look at American Express overall is the diversity of the businesses we are in and we participate in a all over the world. So from a geographic standpoint, I think we have very, very good balance. I think obviously the impact is not just in Europe of something of that nature, but the impact that I think could spill over around the world. And I think the critical thing for us would be what we have done in previous crises is fortunately we do have a strong balance sheet.
We would be very, very focused on ensuring that we continue to have a strong balance sheet. We put together contingency plans relative to different moves that we would need to make from a cost standpoint as well as priorities that we would designate to grow in. But obviously, we don't operate on an island. But what I do feel good about is the overall position of the company and the strength of our balance sheet. But the impacts I think for the world economy would be substantial.
And one last final question, as a personal note, I hope my shares American Express and my Fidelity brokerage account. I understand that American Express, if the rumor is correct, is going to seize its relationship with Fidelity. Do you confirm that? And if so, what kind of an impact will it have on American Express in terms of revenues, etcetera?
Yes. Let me explain. The Fidelity relationship, we had a relationship which is called network partnership with BofA. Since BofA acquired Merrill Lynch, they had less interest in maintaining that relationship. This is not what we call our proprietary business.
So the impact on the company is relatively insignificant. So there's really not much of an impact on the company. And this was really driven more by BofA's strategy to focus on their Financial Services business.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Will you please report the results?
In a moment, I will announce the votes. The votes I'm about to announce are preliminary. In accordance with SEC rules, we will file a report on Form 8 ks with the SEC within 4 business days and that 8 ks report will contain the final tabulation of the votes. On the election of directors, the inspectors of election report that each of the 13 nominees of the Board of Directors listed in the proxy statement received a majority of the votes cast. Each of the 13 nominees received at least 7 0 3,000,000 votes, representing over 50% of the votes cast.
On the ratification of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the inspectors of election report that at least 833,000,000 shares or 98% of the votes cast were voted to ratify the appointment. On the advisory vote on executive compensation, the inspectors of election report that at least 618,000,000 shares or 81% of the votes cast were voted to approve the compensation paid to the company's named executive officers. On the proposal to approve the company's 2016 incentive comp plan, the inspectors of election report that at least 716,000,000 shares or 94% of the total of the votes cast and abstained were voted to approve the company's 2016 incentive compensation plan. On the proposal relating to the annual disclosure of EEO-one data, the Inspectors of Election report that at least 558,000,000 shares or 75% of votes cast were voted against the proposal. On the proposal relating to the report on privacy, data security and government requests, the inspectors of election report that at least 574,000,000 shares or 78% of votes cast were voted against the proposal.
On the proposal relating to action by written consent, the inspectors of election report that at least 457,000,000 shares or 60% of the votes cast were voted against the proposal. On the proposal relating to Independent Board Chairman, the inspectors of election report that at least 463,000,000 shares or 63% of the votes cast were voted against the proposal.
Thank you, Carol. As a result of this morning's voting results, I declare the slate of 13 director nominees recommended by the Board of Directors are elected for a 1 year term. The company's shareholders have approved and ratified the company's appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers for 2016. The company's shareholders have approved the compensation paid to the company's named executive officers. The company's shareholders have approved the company's 2016 16 incentive compensation plan.
The shareholder proposal relating to annual disclosure of EEO-one data did not pass. The shareholder proposal relating to a report on privacy, data, security and government requests did not pass. The shareholder proposal relating to action by written consent did not pass and the shareholder proposal relating to an independent Board Chairman did not pass. There being no further business to come before the meeting, I declare the meeting adjourned. Thank you very much.