Hertz Global Holdings significant event bankruptcy
Hertz Global Holdings (formerly The Hertz Corporation), known as Hertz, is an American car rental company based in Estero, Florida. The company operates its namesake Hertz brand, along with the brands Dollar Rent A Car, Firefly Car Rental and Thrifty Car Rental.
It is one of the three big rental car holding companies in the United States, holding a 36% market share, placing it ahead of both Enterprise Holdings and the Avis Budget Group. As one of the largest worldwide vehicle rental companies by sales, locations, and fleet size, Hertz operates in 160 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, the Middle East and New Zealand.Hertz was ranked 326th in the 2020 Fortune 500 list. The company filed for bankruptcy on May 22, 2020, citing a sharp decline in revenue and future bookings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of December 31, 2021, the company had revenues of $7.3 billion, assets of $19.7 billion, and 23,000 employees. As of July 1, 2021, the company is no longer in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.Bankruptcy
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, on April 30, 2020, Hertz announced that it had missed lease payments on its fleet and was seeking support from its lenders, including activist investor Carl Icahn, in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy. Marinello resigned as CEO on May 18, 2020, and Hertz announced that Paul Stone would be the new president and chief executive. Stone previously served as Hertz's executive vice president and chief retail operations officer for North America. On May 22, 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that Hertz was preparing to file for bankruptcy because it did not reach an agreement with top lenders. That same day, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Carl Icahn held 39% of Hertz's shares when it filed for bankruptcy on May 22, 2020, and he controlled three board seats. He invested a total of $2.3 billion into Hertz shares from 2014 to 2020.Hertz financed itself mostly by taking out loans secured by its fleet of cars, and if the cars fell in value, Hertz's lenders had the right to demand an immediate payment, reducing the amount of the loan, so they were still comfortably covered by the cars’ now-lower value. Because of the crisis, used-car values and sales volumes fell right as Hertz lost most of its customers. The bankruptcy filing started a 60-day clock, during which Hertz's secured lenders must wait before they can foreclose on the 400,000 U.S. cars that were financed through such arrangements.Despite the bankruptcy filing, Hertz announced on June 11 that it was seeking to raise up to $1 billion in new equity (with disclaimers that there is a "risk that the common stock could ultimately be worthless"). The Wall Street Journal characterized the potential stock sale as a "seemingly unprecedented move for a large bankrupt company eager to capitalize on market anomalies," as its stock price rose nearly 1000% from a low of 59 cents after its bankruptcy filing to $5.50 a share. Hertz's stock has been heavily traded by retail investors, becoming one of the most-traded stocks.  Hertz sold $29 million in stock before the Securities Exchange Commission halted further sales.  The stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in October 2020.On July 1, 2021, Hertz emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and changed its ticker symbol from HTZGQ to HTZZ.In October 2021, Mark Fields was named interim CEO of Hertz with a focus on forward looking investments. On October 25, 2021, Fields announced that Hertz will buy 100,000 Tesla vehicles citing his goal of fleet electrification and that Tesla is the "only manufacturer that can produce EVs at scale".In November 2021, the company went public again on the Nasdaq with symbol HTZ.In February 2022, Stephen M. Scherr was named CEO of Hertz.