Enterprise Rent-a-Car Buys Vanguard, a Rival

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Published: March 31, 2007

In the latest sign of consolidation within the car rental industry, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the largest car rental company in North America, said yesterday that it had acquired a smaller rival, Vanguard Car Rental, which owns the National and Alamo brands.

The chief executive of Enterprise, Andrew C. Taylor, said that the acquisition would complement the company’s current business.

“The future belongs to the service providers who offer the broadest array of services for anyone who needs or wants to rent a car,” Mr. Taylor said.

With $9 billion in revenues, a fleet of about 880,000 vehicles and its network of 7,000 locations, Enterprise’s strength is its breadth and penetration into cities across the country. The company is based in St. Louis.

Vanguard, on the other hand, specializes in serving corporate customers at major airport locations.

The acquisition comes during a time of increasing investor interest in the car rental business as rental prices have increased in the aftermath of an effort by the major automakers to not flood the rental market with discounted vehicles.

In 2005, Hertz was acquired from Ford Motor by a group of private equity investors who quickly engineered a public offering at $15 a share last year. The stock closed yesterday at $23.70.

Vanguard, which is based in Tulsa, Okla., is owned by Cerberus, the private equity firm that bought the company out of bankruptcy when it was the ANC Rental Corporation. The National and Alamo brands were previously owned by Republic Industries, controlled by H. Wayne Huizenga.

Last year, in a filing for a public offering, Vanguard said it earned $105.3 million in 2005 on $2.89 billion in revenue.