American Express is planning to woo retailers and other businesses with its biggest fee cut in 20 years in the latest sign of competitive and regulatory pressures, the Financial Times reports. At a presentation for investors in New York last week, the company said the global average of the fees it charged merchants - known as its discount rate - would decline five or six basis points this year, to about 2.37 per cent, costing almost US$600 million in margins, the FT calculates. Goldman Sachs' chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is preparing to step down, and it could happen as soon as the end of this year, the Wall Street Journal reports. However, sources tell CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin that Blankfein hasn't told the board about a departure timeline that names a day within this year, and he won't beat Goldies' former CFO Harvey Schwartz out the door as Schwartz is to retire in April, the FT notes. CNBC has learned scammers appear to have made off with more than $2 million in cryptocurrency after carrying out an apparent fake initial coin offering. The ICO was for a start-up called Giza, which claimed to be developing a device that would allow people to store cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile CaskCoin, the world's first blockchain-based whisky investment fund, has launched, with each coin backed by a wee dram of every cask in a £40 million portfolio of "world-class" scotch. Barclays has paid its top managers just over £20 million in shares from deferred bonus schemes and new stock awards, mostly to compensate several senior executives for payouts they forfeited after leaving JPMorgan Chase, according to FT.com. The share awards represent a 44 per cent rise on the previous year, despite the British bank sliding to a net loss and its share price underperforming most major rivals in 2017. The biggest award was the £9.2 million of shares given to Tim Throsby, head of corporate and investment banking division at Barclays.