Fidel also pleaded guilty to a felony charge connected to the Keating scandal. He hired Raymond Fidel, who eventually became CEO, and renamed the company DriveTime Automotive. At the time, the company had annual revenues of $600 million. #DRIVE TIME FULL#Garcia ended up with full control of Ugly Duckling, buying the shares he didn’t own for $18 million. As the stock market roared in the 1990s, Garcia had Ugly Duckling raise $170 million by conducting an IPO and then issuing more shares.įorbes first wrote about Garcia in 2001, as he was preparing to take Ugly Duckling private after its stock priced crashed from $25 to $2.50. After failing to turn the business around, Garcia merged it with a tiny finance company and built it as a seller and financer of used cars for people with poor credit histories. Garcia’s financial comeback started with Ugly Duckling, a rental car chain he bought for less than $1 million. Both Garcia and his firm filed for bankruptcy protection. He was sentenced to three years of probation, agreeing to cooperate with U.S. senators.Īt 33, Garcia pleaded guilty in 1990 to a bank fraud charge related to his dealings with Lincoln Savings & Loan. Its failure sparked a political scandal because of Keating’s connections and interactions with five U.S. One of his lenders was Lincoln Savings & Loan, which was controlled by Charles Keating. He dropped out of school before graduating to become a stock broker and eventually turned to real estate development in Phoenix. The son of a liquor store owner who was for a while also the mayor of Gallup, New Mexico, Garcia was on the golf team at the University of Arizona. Garcia declined to comment for this story. But other large financial players have bought into Garcia’s latest stock market play and keep providing it with fresh cash injections. Wall Street short sellers are betting big that the stock will collapse. It also lost $57 million in the first three quarters of 2017 and is burning through cash, forcing it to continue raising money. With revenues of $594 million in the first nine months of 2017, up 130% from the same period last year, Carvana is growing fast. Carvana also has eight glass tower vending machines that are as high as eight stories located in cities like Atlanta and Houston, where customers can inspect and pick up purchased used cars. Consumers can use its web site to buy used cars, obtain financing and arrange for vehicle delivery. With Garcia’s son, Garcia III, as CEO, Carvana has been promoted as the “Amazon of cars,” a Phoenix-based technology platform for buying and selling used cars. With shares of Carvana up 46% since its April IPO, Garcia’s stake in Carvana alone is worth $1.5 billion. DriveTime, which sells used cars and is in the sometimes-controversial business of making auto loans to low-income consumers, has seen its business grow 19% annually in the last decade. Forbes estimates his net worth at $2.5 billion.
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