Five months after Masterlease was bought, creating Britain’s biggest independent leasing company, Leasedrive Velo has revealed it is operating under a new name from today (Thursday, May 26).
The Masterlease name is gone and, in what managing director David Bird described as “the last piece in the jigsaw”, the merged businesses will now be known as Leasedrive.
The merger was originally announced in December 2010 after Investec Capital Markets, part of Investec Bank, stumped up the cash to buy Masterlease, but asked Leasedrive Velo to bring it under its stewardship.
That deal propelled the combined businesses into the top 10 of the UK’s contract hire companies with a total risk fleet in excess of 45,000 vehicles, according to the FN50.
But the Leasedrive management team have no intention of resting on their laurels.
Bird and commercial director Roddy Graham told Fleet News that they intend to build on the best parts of both businesses with renewed focus on salary sacrifice, the LCV market and growth in its short term rental business, as well as rolling out new technology.
“We want create the best service provider in this industry bar none,” said Bird. “The staff have been brilliant from day one making it spectacularly easy for us.
“In terms of keeping the existing customer base, they’ve bought into what we’re trying to achieve – getting a properly focussed fleet organisation that only cares about fleet.”
The salary sacrifice offering will be operated under Masterlease’s My Car branding and Graham said that jointly with around 5,000 vehicles they now probably operate the biggest salary sacrifice fleet in the UK.
“We’ve got three big salary sacrifice deals in the public sector going live in the next four weeks – equating to 25,000 employees,” said Graham. “We’re also in discussions with two very large commercial organisations with the My Car product.”
There’s been no massive headcount cull either. The old Masterlease headquarters in Birmingham is being retained, as well as the Leasedrive Velo’s offices in Wokingham.
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Gareth has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist having started his career in local newspapers in the 1990s. Prior to joining Fleet News in 2008, he worked in the public sector as a media advisor and is currently news editor at Fleet News.
magic - 27/05/2011 12:35
Excellent news that Leasedrive have ditched the Masterlease monika and look like they are turning the business back to the success of its Intereasing/Arriva days. Perhaps GMAC can enlighten the Fleet industy as to how they were able to turn a market leader into a disaster in such a short period of time! All credit to Leasedrive Velo and their backers for seeing the potential and backing it up with investment.