Oct. 16–ANC Rental Corp. is history.
The holding company for two of the best-known brands in the rental car business went defunct on Tuesday, when Cerberus Capital Management purchased substantially all of its assets.
Mired in bankruptcy for nearly two years, the parent of National Car Rental System and Alamo Rent A Car will get new financial support from Cerberus, an $8 billion New York hedge fund.
Cerberus agreed to pay $230 million cash and assume $60 million of non-vehicle debt to acquire ANC, which has been protected from creditors under Chapter 11 bankruptcy since November 2001.
The purchase amount will largely go to secured creditors in ANC’s bankruptcy, including Lehman Brothers.
ANC, which was spun-off as a publicly traded company from AutoNation Inc., in 2000 will no longer have publicly traded shares as a majority-owned subsidiary of Cerberus. ANC stock will be wiped out.
Cerberus has renamed the company Vanguard Car Rental USA Inc. Chief executive William Lobeck said the plan is to take the brands back to their roots, with National devoted to business travelers and Alamo aimed at vacationers.
In an interview, Lobeck said Vanguard is in the process of aggressively replacing its fleet of older model cars with new ones. “By the end of the year 75 percent of the fleet will be 2004 models, and that will go to 100 percent by the early part of the first quarter,” he said.
Lobeck said the brands had suffered from drift during the Chapter 11. “Bankruptcy is not a pleasant thing and it brings with it a paralysis where things just don’t get done,” he said.
Vanguard had a profit in June, July and August, which Lobeck said was the first time in a long time it had three consecutive profitable months.
Lobeck said there are no plans to move Vanguard’s headquarters from Fort Lauderdale although eventually he would like to consolidate its facilities in Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale under one roof. Vanguard employs about 1,700 people in South Florida.
The Vanguard management team includes Jeff Parell, who is executive vice president and chief operating officer and Tyler Best, chief information officer. Tom Kennedy was recruited from Northwest Airlines to be chief financial officer.
Former ANC chief executive Bill Plamondon will serve as a consultant to Vanguard, Lobeck said.
Michael Egan, the long-time head of Alamo and former chairman of ANC, is not associated with the new company, Lobeck said.
—–
To see more of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel — including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings — or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sun-sentinel.com.
(c) 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
ANCXQ, AN,
