American Express : Hiring freeze, but no layoffs

American Express (NYSE:AXP) will avoid layoffs this year, says CEO Steve Squeri, but nevertheless needs to reduce costs. To that end, he's put in place a hiring freeze.

In other items, he notes that two-thirds of the company's customer-service teams (that's 60K people) now work from home vs. 10% a couple of weeks ago.

Squeri: "In two weeks, we have completely transformed our global servicing operations, going from a brick-and-mortar, traditional call-center environment to a totally distributed, home-based servicing one."

Shares and down more than 35% from a month ago.