Chippenham-based Fleet Support Group (FSG), one of the UK’s largest fleet management companies, has been acquired by the American-based Automotive Resources International (ARI).
The deal will give ARI its first business in Europe. The company has operations in North America, Canada, Mexico, South Africa and Australia, with alliances in India and China. It has around 1.8m vehicles globally under fleet management. FSG will add a further 55,000.
There will be no change in FSG’s management structure or staff positions as a result of the acquisition, which has been made for an undisclosed sum. FSG’s Chippenham head office will become ARI’s European head office.
FSG’s award-winning RiskMaster programme will be adopted as ARI’s global offering to fleets with the company investing further in the software at its 180-employee IT centre. ARI describes it as having “20 times the resource to deliver the services we do now”.
ARI provides finance lease funding in America with the lessee taking the residual value risk: it forecasts that this funding model will become more popular as vehicles move into the balance sheet.
