Mark Frissora, who took over July 1 as CEO of Caesars Entertainment, was to blame for accounting failures while he was CEO of Hertz Global Holdings, according to a filing the car rental company made last week with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.
Hertz, in a year-end financial filing with the SEC, said Frissora’s “management style and temperament” led to a “pressurized operating environment” during his seven years as CEO of the Florida-based company, during which time he expanded Hertz from a single brand into a conglomerate with four brands under its corporate umbrella.
That management style, said the rental company, led to “material misstatements” in the company’s financial reports in 2011, 2012 and 2013, to the tune of $207 million. The report said Frissora set challenging financial targets for his executives as key performance measures, which led to the accounting errors.
Caesars, which named Frissora as the successor to Gary Loveman as Caesars CEO (Loveman remains chairman of the operator), was quick to defend the executive. In a statement, Caesars Executive Vice President Jan Jones said Hertz was “fortunate to have Mark at its helm” during the period when the company led the consolidation of the car-rental industry with its acquisition of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group.
“Hertz’s disclosure (in the SEC report) very specifically did no suggest any wrongdoing by Mark,” Jones said. “In fact, it described a CEO focused on driving performance and results, and merely posits that this focus may have led to some of the accounting errors.
