Automotive Fleet, July 2017

created a global alliance which continues to exist as the Element Arval Global Alliance Arval was founded in 1989 and is fully owned by BNP Paribas Arval operates in 26 countries in Europe Asia Pacific South America and Africa Spearheading the effort to add additional partners to PHH Arval Global Alliance was Jim Rallo VP strategic partnerships for PHH who successfully signed partnerships with lessors in Mexico Southern Africa Australia and Japan In the early 1990s PHH acquired a vehicle crash repair processing company in the U K which it renamed PHH Accident Management One interesting piece of fleet trivia as related by Wayne Smolda CEO of The CEI Group is that the renaming of the U K company to PHH Accident Management marked the first time the U K fleet industry was exposed to the business term accident management As a result of this name change the term accident management was generically adopted in common use throughout the U K fleet industry and ultimately migrated beyond the U K and is now used throughout the European fleet industry At much the same time Wheels Inc established an international partnership with leading independent lessors under the banner of Fleet Synergy and more recently became one of the two founding partners along with ALD Automotive principally owned by the large multinational bank Société Générale S A in a global fleet alliance offering coverage in 54 countries including all of North America and Western Europe In 1996 LeasePlan appointed Richard Pipenhagen to be its senior vice president global sales and marketing where he successfully championed a start up sales effort that targeted the international fleet market that resulted in signing numerous major international fleets through 2000 Much of the success was derived via support and partnership with LeasePlan International in Almere The Netherlands said Pipenhagen Frequent meetings with multi national companies both in U S and abroad was an essential aspect of the ascendancy of this market In 1998 GE Capital Fleet Services signed a major lease agreement with the service business unit of IBM that covered its 2000 vehicles in the U S 2000 in Australia and more than 300 units in Mexico and Canada Also around this same time ExxonMobil signed a regional fleet management agreement for all of its business operations in the Western Hemisphere In 2003 Mattel signed a pan European fleet agreement with LeasePlan In 2005 CEI opened CEI Europe and started a call center in Barcelona offering accident management services to fleets operating in Spain Belgium Germany and the U K That experience illustrated the vast differences between the U S and European accident management service models said Smolda Following its purchase by Hertz in 2011 Donlen expanded its reach beyond North America through Hertzs global footprint in South America Europe Africa and Asia In addition Donlen has five strategic partnerships allowing it to provide global fleet management solutions and long term rentals in 144 countries Strategic partnerships to provide international fleet services in Europe and Turkey are with Athlon Car Lease a member of the Daimler Financial Services global network and with Lex AutoLease in the U K In Mexico Donlen created a strategic partnership in 2010 with Masterlease a major vehicle financing and fleet management company that is owned by Grupo Financiero BanRegio In Australia and New Zealand Donlen is partnered with FleetPlus a member of the Eclipx Group Starting in late 2011 ARI entered the European fleet market through a series of acquisitions In December 2011 ARI purchased UK based fleet Support Group Ltd FSG Britains largest independent fleet management company FSG was founded in 1987 and provided fleet management services to more than 55000 cars and trucks in the UK On July 8 2013 ARI announced it acquired the fleet management segment of Fleetlevel Services GmbH in Germany Previously Fleetlevel Services was a subsidiary of Alphabet International providing services in the German market for more than 30 years The acquired business was renamed ARI Fleet Germany In early October 2013 ARI reached an agreement to purchase the German fleet company HPI and its related European business entities In April 2015 ARI acquired the German technology company netcar24 which offers enterprise software solutions for the fleet management industry ARI manages its continental European operations from its offices in Stuttgart and Frankfurt Germany and its UK operations from Chippenham England As more multinational fleets approached automotive OEMs about negotiating multi country sourcing agreements many OEMs responded by creating international fleet sales organizations At first these efforts were focused on pan European sourcing agreements In the early 1990s Vauxhall Opel began actively negotiating multi year pan European fleet sourcing contracts Renault and Volvo were among the first European OEMs to set global fleet AUTOMOTIVE FLEET I JULY 2017 44 In 1999 General Motors named Steve Higgs far right to the newly created position of manager global North American fleet development and commenced expanding the internal structure to respond to multinational fleet needs in major markets around the world In 1999 General Motors created a global fleet advisory board among its clients that operated multinational fleets to help implement a global communication system and processes