Car rental and equipment rental company Hertz Global Holdings raised $1.32 billion last week with one of the largest initial public offerings of the year, although the price was below expectations. The offering of 88 million shares sold for $15 per share, short of the forecast price range of $16 to $18 per share.
The offering gives the company an initial market value of about $4.8 billion.
The IPO was held less than a year after private equity firms acquired the Park Ridge, N.J.-based company from Ford Motor Co. last December for $5.6 billion, in a transaction worth $15 billion including debt.
Hertz, the world’s largest car rental company and No. 3-ranked North American equipment rental company, said it intends to use the IPO proceeds to repay debt and for general corporate purposes. The IPO was underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan. Deutsche Bank Securities was dropped as an underwriter after an e-mail written by a Deutsche employee was forwarded to about 175 institutional accounts, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
