A Long Time Coming: Hertz May Buy Dollar Thrifty

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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It seems like decades since Hertz (NYSE: HTZ) began to jockey with its primary rival–Avis Budget Group (NYSE: CAR)–for the right to own Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group (NYSE: DTG) which is among the second tier companies in the car rental industry. If market share is critical to profit, then the battle’s outcome could be important. And, Hertz appears to have prevailed, according to Bloomberg.

The news service reports:

An offer in the high $80s a share will be presented to both boards over the weekend. The deal may provide less than a 10 percent premium over Tulsa, Oklahoma- based Dollar Thrifty’s closing price yesterday of $81.  It also may fall apart like those that have preceded it.

There have been offers and counter-offers for Dollar Thrifty in the past. So, Avis may come back again.

Dollar General’s 52-week high is $84.91. In early 2011, before initial offers, the shares were below $48. They spiked to $84 in June of last year. When it appeared that there would be no buy-out, Dollar General’s shares fell back to $54 in the spring.

Now, it appears that Dollar General investors will get the sum they hoped for nearly two years ago.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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