C-suite shake up as Hertz COO quits and firm names third CFO in two years

The Lee County company continues to shuffle C-level executives as COO and CFO leave both after less than a year on the job.

By Louis Llovio
| 4:10 p.m. June 3, 2024

Hertz reaches settlement in false arrest lawsuits. (File photo)

Charlotte–Lee–Collier

The Hertz Co. is once again reorganizing it executive office, this time bringing in a new CFO, its third since March of last year, as its chief operating officer departs.

The global car rental giant, based in Estero, announced Monday that Scott Haralson had been hired as CFO, replacing Alexandra Brooks, who took on the role permanently less than a year ago. She had first held the title on an interim basis starting in March 2023 when her predecessor, Kenny Cheung, left for a job at Sysco.

Hertz Announces Appointment of Scott M. Haralson as Chief Financial Officer

According to a news release announcing the move, Hertz says Brooks is leaving to “pursue other opportunities.”

While the focus of that 516-word news release was Haralson and his new job, the company added one sentence at the bottom of the statement saying that its COO was leaving immediately.

“Hertz and chief operating officer Justin Keppy have agreed that Mr. Keppy would resign from the Company, effective June 3, 2024.”

Keppy had been on the job since November. He replaced Paul Stone, who had been in that job for four years.

The company gave no reason for Keppy's departure and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Hertz’s executive suite is long familiar with change as a rotation of C-level executives has shuffled in and out over the past several years as the company dealt with COVID, bankruptcy court and a failed electric vehicle project.

Most noticeably the changes have come from the top position where Hertz has seen five CEOs since 2017.

The most recent person to hold the job is Gil West, who took over in April after Stephen Scherr left after slightly more than two years on the job.

As for Haralson, he comes to Hertz from Spirit Airlines where he held the same title since 2018. Before that, Hertz says he held financial leadership roles at Dish Network, Frontier Airlines, Swift Aviation Group and US Airways.

Hertz, in the statement, says he comes to the company with a “deep experience across all facets of financial management, including capital markets and capital funding, capital budgeting, strategic planning, forecasting, financial planning and analysis and cost management and treasury and cash management.”

Haralson will take over as CFO at the end of June and Brooks will stay on until then.

The past four years at Hertz

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy May 22, 2020 following nearly 15,000 layoffs stemming from both the pandemic and a car rental industry slowdown and transformation that preceded COVID-19. It exited bankruptcy in June 2021, with a new ticker symbol (HTZZ), it’s debt load reduced and $5.9 billion in capital from firms such as Knighthead Capital Management, Certares Opportunities and Apollo Capital Management.

With that funding in tow, in late 2021 and 2022 Hertz went on an electric vehicle buying binge, ordering 100,000 Teslas and hiring Tom Brady as a spokesman. It later said it planned to buy 65,000 vehicles from Swedish EV company Polestar.

By early 2024 Hertz began to reverse course on its go-big EV strategy: It announced it would be selling off 20,000 electric vehicles, just a bit more than two years after it announced the major investment in Tesla. In a public filing when it announced the EV sale, the company said it sought “to eliminate a “disproportionate number of lower margin rentals and reduce damage expenses associated with EVs.”