Reuters reported last week that Cana­dian equip­ment finance com­pany Ele­ment Finan­cial Corp is in exclu­sive talks to buy PHH Arval for about $1.35 billion.

Ele­ment has not com­mented, but PHH issued a state­ment late last week acknowl­edg­ing that it is “engaged in dis­cus­sions regard­ing a poten­tial sale of PHH Arval,” while adding that there “can be no assur­ance that these dis­cus­sions will result in a defin­i­tive agree­ment or on what terms. PHH had announced in Feb­ru­ary that it was con­sid­er­ing sell­ing or sep­a­rat­ing its fleet leas­ing busi­ness and mort­gage business.

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Bernie Kavanagh is Vice Pres­i­dent of Cor­po­rate Pay­ment Solu­tions at WEX, Inc. We talked with him last month at NAFA I&E in Min­neapo­lis about trends he is see­ing in this mar­ket­place and, impor­tantly, the solu­tions fleets are look­ing for sup­pli­ers like WEX to provide.

When we asked Bernie to give us some insight into the chief con­cerns of his fleet clients, he sur­prised us a bit. In the past few years the high price or volatil­ity of fuel prices got the most atten­tion, but those costs no longer take cen­ter stage. Now, it’s all about data – the more spe­cific, the better.

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Data is the most impor­tant tool in a fleet manager’s tool­box. Know­ing what’s being spent, and how, empow­ers man­agers to make the right pur­chas­ing deci­sions for their fleets with­out leav­ing it up to indi­vid­ual dri­vers. The more spe­cific your data, the bet­ter informed your deci­sions will be. That’s where Level III data cap­ture can help.

Level III data is enhanced trans­ac­tion detail that helps fleet man­agers iden­tify not just the “where” and the “when” behind a pur­chase, but also the “who”, “what”, and “how”. It’s a tool that can help fleets run more smoothly and cost-efficiently by pin­point­ing prob­lem areas before they spin out of con­trol. With­out Level III data, fleet man­agers would need to man­u­ally audit state­ments to dis­cover poten­tial problems.

Read more and down­load the whitepaper

Donlen announced their strate­gic align­ment with Jim Pat­ti­son Lease, a lead­ing Cana­dian fleet man­age­ment com­pany with more than 28,000 vehi­cles under lease or man­age­ment and part of the Jim Pat­ti­son Group, one of Canada’s largest pri­vately held companies.

Under the agree­ment, the co-branded Donlen/Jim Pat­ti­son Lease main­te­nance prod­uct will pro­vide Cana­dian cus­tomers with fleet man­age­ment ser­vices from coast-to-coast and offer an estab­lished ven­dor net­work of ser­vice and repair facil­i­ties, as well as knowl­edge­able, bilin­gual main­te­nance tech­ni­cians. In addi­tion, dri­vers will access the exten­sive net­work using a co-branded main­te­nance card.

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LoJack Corp. announced that law enforce­ment offi­cials recov­ered more than $121 mil­lion in stolen vehi­cles equipped with the LoJack Stolen Vehi­cle Recov­ery Sys­tem in 2013.

For the fifth year in a row, the Honda Accord was ranked as the most stolen and recov­ered vehi­cle equipped with a LoJack sys­tem. Cal­i­for­nia con­tin­ues to top the list as the state with the most LoJack system-equipped stolen and recov­ered vehicles.

READ MORE to find out the top 10 most stolen and recov­ered vehicles

Even the calmest dri­vers have expe­ri­enced the occa­sional moment of road rage as they suf­fer the fol­lies of another rude or incon­sid­er­ate motorist. But what’s most likely to set us off? Get­ting stuck behind slow pokes who won’t move out of the left lane, tail­gaters and those tex­ting while dri­ving are some of the most rage-inducing behav­iors, accord­ing to a new study by travel site Expedia.

Curi­ously, the 2014 Road Rage Report found that 69% of those sur­veyed have been “flipped off” by another motorist for some per­ceived slight – but only 17% of those who responded to the study said they have ever extended a rude hand ges­ture on their own.

READ MORE about road-rage induc­ing behaviors

Land­marks are essen­tial to mak­ing location-based infor­ma­tion sig­nif­i­cant within a GPS track­ing solu­tion. You can cre­ate land­marks around any area on a map that has mean­ing to your fleet – cus­tomer loca­tions, employee homes, your ware­houses, or any other loca­tion fre­quently vis­ited by your dri­vers. GPS Insight has taken this tech­nol­ogy to the next level by adding attrib­utes to this impor­tant soft­ware feature.

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For­mer auto adviser Harry Wil­son said the government-appointed auto task force was com­pletely unaware of the Gen­eral Motors’ igni­tion switch issue and noted the admin­is­tra­tion was hav­ing trou­ble get­ting infor­ma­tion out of GM when craft­ing the $49.5 bil­lion fed­eral bailout.

Wil­son said the issue “sadly is emblem­atic of the cul­tural prob­lems” of GM. “They would do any­thing to save a penny, includ­ing some really bad deci­sions, both eco­nom­i­cally and morally. That was a part of the cul­ture that was dri­ven by a com­pany that was liv­ing on the brink of dis­as­ter for many years prior to 2009.”

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The auto­mo­bile indus­try is unsus­tain­able in its cur­rent form, accord­ing to the lat­est ver­sion of Gen­eral Motors’ cor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal and sus­tain­abil­ity report.

GM — and its com­peti­tors — will need to make sig­nif­i­cant changes in the com­ing years to just about every aspect of the busi­ness, from the tech­nol­ogy used to power vehi­cles to the high-tech gear that will keep motors con­nected. But even the basic man­u­fac­tur­ing process will have to be trans­formed, the report stressed, with envi­ron­men­tal issues at the forefront.

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The Aus­tralian Finan­cial Review invited some lead­ing fleet man­age­ment orga­ni­za­tions and the Aus­tralasian Fleet Man­age­ment Asso­ci­a­tion (AfMA) to answer ques­tions on key issues fac­ing fleet man­agers in 2014 and into the future.

What do you see as the top three emerg­ing trends that will have an impact on fleet man­agers in the 2014/15 finan­cial year?

Spiro Har­alam­bopou­los, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Lease­Plan Aus­tralia, sug­gests tech­nol­ogy will drive emerg­ing trends and iden­ti­fies inte­grated telem­at­ics, mobile tech­nol­ogy and car shar­ing. He believes each of these areas will allow fleet man­agers to increase the pro­duc­tiv­ity of their fleets through effi­cient use and enable a reduc­tion in run­ning costs.

Ed Stanistreet, gen­eral man­ager at Toy­ota Fleet Man­age­ment, also nom­i­nates tech­nol­ogy such as con­nect mobil­ity and mobile apps.

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