Hertz settled with the SEC for $16 million and Frissora wasn’t charged. A spokesman for the former CEO said he presided over operational improvements during his eight-year tenure. Hertz’s 2015 earnings restatements have no bearing on the company’s current financial situation and Frissora didn’t direct any improper accounting or engage in any wrongdoing, the spokesman said.
Still, Hertz sued Frissora and three other ex-senior managers last year, seeking to claw back $70 million in bonuses over the executives’ roles in the accounting scandal. Frissora and the other executives filed their own suits in Delaware Chancery Court seeking to force the company to cover their legal bills in the clawback fight. Judge Kathaleen S. McCormick granted those requests last year. One executive reached a settlement for undisclosed terms.
In an amended complaint filed in federal court in New Jersey this month, Hertz demanded that Frissora and former general counsel Jeffrey Zimmerman hand over $56 million in incentive pay because of their involvement in accounting errors that overstated Hertz’s pre-tax income. That led to the $200 million restatement and the duo’s ouster, according to court filings.
Icahn Enters
Icahn entered the picture after a 2014 dinner in New York that an industry analyst had with Dan Ninivaggi, who was then CEO of Icahn Enterprises. Ninivaggi was told Hertz had a good brand and solid foundation but needed discipline and better management. Icahn was swayed and bought up shares. By year-end, his holding was worth more than $1.13 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The head of Hertz’s equipment-rental business took over the company for a few months before a fateful decision. Rather than hire former Dollar Thrifty CEO Scott Thompson to run the company, Icahn went with John Tague, an ex-COO of United Airlines.
Icahn “didn’t put the best people in place” and “had a revolving door of managers,” said Keller, who believes Hertz would not be in the position it’s in today if it had hired Thompson. Icahn didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Tague updated Hertz’s fleet but did so with passenger cars just as U.S. consumers began fleeing sedans for sport-utility vehicles. Consumers went looking to other rental counters for SUVs, and depreciation costs mounted as sedans retained less of their value. He also tried raising prices, figuring the industry’s oligopoly would follow suit. But Enterprise and Avis didn’t and instead picked off more of Hertz’s customers.
In an interview Saturday, Tague said growth wasn’t his priority. He started tilting the fleet mix toward SUVs, but had a lot else on his plate: finishing the accounting investigation and restating earnings, integrating Dollar Thrifty, rebuilding the management team hollowed out by the Florida move and spinning off the equipment-rental business.
“Upon my arrival, it was clear that many things had to be addressed with a sense of urgency,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s what I undertook.”
Future Journeys
Tague retired at the beginning of 2017 and was replaced by Kathryn Marinello, who had been on the board of GM and truckmaker Volvo AB. The results of her early efforts to shrink the fleet and further the shift toward SUVs were undercut by the emergence of Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc.