About

Europcar was founded in France in 1949 and is now Europe’s leading vehicle rental firm with a presence in over 140 countries worldwide. Led by Franck Rohard, group general counsel and secretary of the supervisory board, since 2015 the legal team has been lauded for its prolific work ethic by securing a number agreements in a short space of time. Supporting Rohard on these projects is a team that has been injected with new talent in the last few years, such as Charline Le Clainche who joined in 2015 as head of economic law and group compliance officer, and Cynthia Herrmann, head of corporate law, who joined in 2016. In September 2016 the team assisted on an exclusive car-sharing partnership, “Drive & Share”, in an innovative pilot between its innovation unit and GoMore, the European leader in no-fee car sharing, which allows customers to rent a car for up to a year with the option of sharing it on the GoMore platform whenever they are not using it. Continuing with the company’s diversification strategy, that same month Europcar announced its acquisition of Brunel, a leading provider of chauffeur and executive driver services available on a mobile application. An official company statement said of the deal: ‘The acquisition marks another step in Europcar’s strategy to build a broad-ranging mobility offering to its customers’. In what was a prolific year, the team had already facilitated the group’s minority investment in Wanderio, a multi modal search and comparison platform in a ‘new step in the development of Europcar’s mobility strategy’. Carrying on this trend into the new year, Rohard and his team played a role in securing yet another ‘key strategic step’, this time with Shouqi Car Rental, a leading car rental company in China and part of the Beijing Tourism Group. In January it was announced that the two companies have signed a worldwide commercial partnership to allow their respective customers to access the others’ car rental services directly from their own website. As part of the deal, Shouqi customers will be able to purchase all-inclusive packages outside of China throughout the Europcar Worldwide Network. With the high rate of acquisitions the team has been involved in, it should be noted that in 2017 the French Competition Authority dismissed a case in favour of Europcar, further exemplifying the legal department’s value to the business.