(Reuters) – U.S. car rental company Hertz Global Holdings <HTZ.N> said on Tuesday it has paid about $16.2 million in retention bonuses to a range of key executives at the director level and above, days after the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
The company paid President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Stone $700,000, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jamere Jackson $600,000 as retention bonuses, Hertz said in a filing to the U.S. regulators.
Last week, the board of the company, which counts billionaire investor Carl Icahn as its largest shareholder with a nearly 39% stake, allowed it to seek chapter 11 protection in a U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware.
The firm is reeling under travel bans and lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of the new coronavirus. Since the virus outbreak, a large portion of Hertz’s revenue, which comes from car rentals at airports, have evaporated.
With nearly $19 billion of debt and roughly 38,000 employees worldwide as of the end of 2019, Hertz is among the largest companies to be undone by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Employees who received the retention bonus would forfeit the right to participate in the company’s 2020 annual bonus plan.
(This story fixes typo in paragraph 4)
(Reporting by Rachit Vats in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
