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More than a decade before Hertz CEO Gil West ran a car rental firm, he served a 12-year stint as the chief operating officer at Delta Air Lines. Now, he’s bringing some old airline colleagues over with him.
Hertz on Monday announced a slew of new leadership changes, with all but one joining from outside the company and — perhaps more importantly — experience working at Delta. The exception is Katherine Lee Martin, who was appointed on Monday as General Counsel, a role she had been serving in an interim capacity.
Sandeep Dube, who held various roles at Delta from 2015 to 2021, will join Hertz as its new chief commercial officer later this month from Intuit Mailchimp.
Henry Kuykendall, fresh from a 33-year tenure at Delta across a variety of roles, is also joining as the executive vice president overseeing North American operations. Mike Moore will take an executive position presiding over fleet maintenance. He has previously worked for both Delta, where he led the company’s TechOps division, and Virgin Galactic where he was head of Spaceline Technical Operations.
The final appointee announced Monday is Greg May, who will oversee fleet management at Hertz after decades working for Delta, Northwest Airlines, and United Airlines. He also founded an aircraft investment firm for Blackstone as well as an aircraft leasing company.
Hertz has run into issues over the last year with its fleet of electric vehicles, including high repair costs, leading it to sell off tens of thousands of EVs. Many renters were unfamiliar with how to charge or otherwise properly use an EV, but chose to do so anyway because of what was available, according to Hertz.
Besides the wave of ex-Delta employees, Hertz has hired at least one other airline veteran as an executive. The firm tapped former Spirit Airlines CFO Scott Haralson to oversee financials last month.
“Our enhanced executive team, and the added resilience and flexibility afforded by the capital we recently raised, enable us to pursue our fleet rotation plan on an accelerated timeline, deliver our cost and revenue improvement initiatives, and allow Hertz to reach its full potential,” West said in a statement.
Hertz last month said it had entered agreements to sell $1 billion worth of notes, which would be used to pay down part of its $2 billion committed revolving credit facility. The firm will announce its second-quarter earnings on August 1.
Hertz stock sank more than 2% in trading Monday. Shares are down more than 65% year-to-date.