How Hertz fell into a margin call trap #finance #privateequity #shorts

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]There's a media cover story about how COVID killed Hertz rental car. They say that empty rental lots bankrupted a billion-dollar company, but that's not true. The real killer was actually a mechanical margin call. Now, Hertz didn't legally own their vehicles. They used this bankruptcy remote special purpose entities. These entities issued bonds to hedge funds, bought the cars, and then leased them back to Hertz. So, this lowered their borrowing costs, but it handed absolute operational control to the bondholders. Now, the debt was strictly collateralized by the market-to-market value of the fleet. So, when the pandemic hit and the wholesale used car market temporarily collapsed, the sudden depreciation triggered an automatic amortization event in the bond covenants. It was an inescapable multi-billion-dollar margin call. It was a cash grab. Hertz was contractually forced to inject instant cash, liquid cash, into the entities in order to cover the plunging vehicle values, but travel was completely dead. They didn't have the cash. The creditors refused to waive the covenants, and the vehicles became these toxic anchors dragging down the balance sheet.

[00:00:59]So, Hertz didn't run out of customers.

[00:01:01]They ran out of collateral until