American Express (NYSE: AXP) shares fell 1.4% Wednesday after a report the Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining its foreign exchange pricing.
The investigation out of the FBI's Washington field office is in its early stages and is focused on whether the card company's foreign exchange international payments department misrepresented pricing to clients to get more business, according to the report in The Wall Street Journal.
Amex recruited business clients with offers of low currency-conversion rates and then jacked up the rates without warning, the WSJ reported in August. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has also been looking into how Amex disclosed pricing to customers, the WSJ reported.
Last week, Amex announced that it has received notification of an unsolicited "mini-tender" offer by Baker Mills LLC to purchase up to 45,000 shares, or approximately 0.005%, of the outstanding common stock of the company as of July 18 at a price of $82.00 per share.
Baker Mills’ offer price is 20.41% less than the $103.03 closing price per share of the company’s common stock on August 17, the last trading day before the mini-tender offer commenced.
American Express does not endorse Baker Mills’ mini-tender offer and recommends that the company’s shareholders do not tender their shares in response to the offer because the offer is at a price significantly below the current market price for the company’s shares and subject to several conditions.
Shares doffed 25 cents Thursday morning to $105.43
