Hertz announces equipment spinoff

ESTERO — Car rental giant Hertz announced its long-awaited plan to spin off its equipment rental business will be completed by the middle of next year.

Activist investors including Carl Icahn have pressured Hertz to spin off the equipment rental business as a separate publicly traded company. But accounting and operational issues at Hertz since it moved its headquarters to Southwest Florida from New Jersey two years ago have stalled those efforts.

With about 4,500 employees, Hertz Equipment Rental has 280 branches, of which 270 are in the United States and Canada, and the remaining branches are in the United Kingdom, China and through joint-venture arrangements in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In addition, the business operate through 14 franchisee-owned branches in Greece, Iceland, Portugal and the French island of Corsica in Europe. Other franchisees are located in Afghanistan, Panama and Chile.