Lucas Bell 
As the markets closed down for the long holiday weekend on Friday night, Hertz officially filed for bankruptcy. Like many other large corporations filing for economic protection right now, the company cited a lack of revenue pertaining to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. With travel at an all time low right now, not many people are renting cars from massive rental fleets. That didn’t stop the company from taking care of its executives the day before the filing took place however.
According to a report from Business Insider, Hertz disbursed some $16.2 million between their top 340 executives on May 19, just one day before the company filed for bankruptcy. CEO Paul Stone walked away with the largest check, totaling $700,000, despite only starting at the company three days prior. According to a government filing made by Hertz today, the company states that these payments were made in an effort to keep high-level employees from leaving amid this financial crisis.
Furthermore, the cash payouts came as a result of the top level executives losing out on their yearly bonuses due to the bankruptcy filing. Just last month Hertz laid off 10,000 of their 38,000 employees, the majority of which reside here in the United States. There is no word at this time as to what will happen to those who remain employed by the company.
And so it seems the coronavirus pandemic has claimed yet another business that doesn’t fit in a quarantined world. We knew that things weren’t looking great when we reported on the number of Hertz Camaro coupes and convertibles and Corvette Z06 special editions that had recently been listed for sale on Autotrader, and the announcement came quickly after that. We’ll leave you to decide how kosher dumping huge swaths of company money into executive accounts during the pandemic is, but let’s just say it hasn’t been a great look for Hertz. On the bright side, we might just get to see more Hertz rental cars hit the market very soon.
