Car dealer wannabes must pay the price - Automotive News
Brands: Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Mazda. Buyer: ZT Wealth of Houston, a private-equity/family office investor. Blue sky paid: $43 million. Other bids' blue sky: $25 million to $42 million. Stores' 2014 financials: $150 million-plus revenue, $6 million earnings. Source: ZT Wealth When Gerald Hollingsworth came home from volunteer medical duty in Vietnam in 1968, he wrote to Toyota's U. S. offices praising the Toyopet he drove abroad and wondering about U. S. sales plans. Toyota's response: a franchise in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. , that became the launching point for Hollingsworth's four-brand Quality Imports dealership group. When Houston medical industry entrepreneur Taseer Badar, 41, decided this decade to try getting into auto retail, his overtures to automakers brought a much different response: Stand in line. Badar's wealth management firm, ZT Wealth, spent $80 million to buy Hollingsworth's Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Mazda stores. Trying to invest in dealerships was "very humbling," said Badar, CEO of ZT Wealth. Badar partnered with Garrick Hatfield, general manager of Alex Rodriguez Mercedes-Benz near Houston until it sold to Group 1 Automotive Inc. Source: www.autonews.com
