Status: 07/28/2021 10:11 p.m.
A car rental company should soon be part of the VW empire again: Volkswagen is buying back Europcar for around 2.5 billion euros. The French company accepted a corresponding offer from Wolfsburg in the evening.
VW boss Herbert Diess actually wanted to slim down the group with its twelve brands and rather downsize it. The Wolfsburg-based company recently surrendered the majority of the Bugatti luxury brand.
Takeover offer slightly increased
But now Diess wants to expand the VW empire again – with a car rental company. As part of a consortium with the asset manager Attestor and the largest VW importer in the Netherlands, Pon Holdings, VW is acquiring Europcar. The offer was increased by one cent to 50 cents per share. That corresponds to around 2.5 billion euros.
Both sides have now agreed on the deal. In the evening, Europcar announced that it would accept the offer. The VW supervisory board approved the transaction.
With Europcar to the leading mobility provider
The deal also makes sense from VW’s point of view. VW boss Diess announced that Europcar should play a central role in setting up a mobility platform. Europe’s leading car rental company has a wide network of stations at airports, train stations and in city centers. “With its modern fleet management and broad network of stations, Europcar will help Volkswagen to achieve its ambitious goals for expanding mobility services more quickly,” explained Diess. Customers are increasingly using subscription models and car sharing as an alternative to their own car.
Volkswagen is already involved in car sharing under the WeShare brand and offers ridesharing services with Moia. This business is to be expanded in the next few years. The group wants to transform itself from a classic car manufacturer to a technology group that, in addition to vehicles, also earns money with software and digital services.
Remarried after the divorce 15 years ago
Europcar already belonged to VW at the end of the 1990s. In 2006 the Wolfsburg-based company sold the car rental company because it no longer suited their core business. During the corona pandemic, Europcar then got into the worst crisis in its history. France and Spain had to help out with emergency loans. The Europcar major shareholder Eurazeo got out. To survive, the car rental company reduced its fleet of vehicles by almost half.