Pictured: Steven Hudson, CEO, Element Financial Corporation
By Mike Sheldrick
Element Financial Corp. has vaulted to the largest North American fleet leasing company by buying GE Capital’s fleet leasing assets in the U.S. and Mexico, and in Australia and New Zealand for a total of $6.9 billion. The deal comprises about 580,000 vehicles, doubling Elements North American presence.
In Europe, GE plans to sell its fleet of 160,000 leased vehicles to Arval, a unit of PNB Paribas. Arval and Element already partner in North America. On closing of the transactions, the Element-Arval Global Alliance will be serving customer fleets in more than 40 countries— more than 2 million vehicles.
Two years ago, Element bought GE’s fleet management business in Canada. That acquisition, says Steven Hudson, Element’s CEO, means that the two companies have already integrated significant parts of their technology and operations, allowing the new acquisition to move quickly, assuming it is approved by regulators. That should be no problem, say Element executives. In the U.S., even though Element will have about a 40% market share of the fleet leasing industry, that only represents 20% of the vehicles that are counted as fleet vehicles.
In addition to expanding its footprint in North America, Element will become the largest fleet leasing company in Australia and New Zealand. “We see the opportunity to expand our fleet management operations into Australia and New Zealand as an excellent fit with our established North American operations,” said Bradley Null Meyer, Element’s President. “In addition to strengthening our ability to support international fleet customers through these transactions, we believe the economic scale of Element’s expanded fleet management enterprise will enable us to accelerate the development and deployment of the next generation of advanced fleet analytics and data benchmarking tools.”
Other advantages that Element expects to reap from the purchase include expense reductions, procurement savings through increased buying power, and “best-in-class” services that it can offer lessees.
As dramatic as this move is, Element sees future growth ahead. “We’ll be participating in the consolidating of the leasing business, “ says Hudson. He said, “Growth at Element is not over, not over, not over,”
Element was the logical buyer for GE’s Fleet operations because of its earlier purchase of GE’s Canadian operations. The move was part of a larger strategy at GE to shed its financial assets and focus on manufacturing. Earlier in June GE announced that it would sell most of its U.S. private-equity lending business to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for about $12 billion.
