Lex Autolease
Lex Autolease was created in May 2009 from the merger of HBOS owned Lex Vehicle Leasing with Lloyds TSB Autolease, and is the currently the largest vehicle leasing business in the United Kingdom with a fleet of about 385,000 vehicles. One in every thirty new cars sold in the United Kingdom is through Lex Autolease. Lex Vehicle Leasing was owned by HBOS between July 2006 and April 2009, part owned with Aviva from November 2005 when it was part of their RAC plc company only the year before. Following the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds TSB Group which  owned Autolease since December 2000, the new Lloyds Banking Group merged the two operations into the new Lex Autolease. At the time of the merger Lex was carrying a debt of 2.4 billion. The company can trace its origins back to 1959, when both Lex and Autolease were established. Lex was established in the 1920s but in 1959, it acquired British Colonial Motors which allowed it to enter the contract hire business. Autolease was established in the same year by Britax, which also owned Bristol Street Motors. The merger was expected to be in 2009 in September 2008. Lex has  been unsuccessful in the last few years with losing a number of large white label contracts such as HSBC Vehicle Finance, Ford Business Partner and Volvo. Lex opened a new multi million pound car supermarket and vehicle processing centre in Coventry in June 2014, which created thirty jobs. The centre however was scheduled to close in April 2016, less than two years after initially opening. It closed on 20 May 2016 along with the site in Oldbury. Previous acquisitions. Prior to May 2009, both Lex and Autolease are the end results of several other company mergers and acquisitions. Lex grew  with first buying Controlled Cost Motoring in 1969, establishing Lombard Contract Hire in 1983 and Fleetdrive being officially acquired in April 1988.