History of Cendant a Zwamel

History

Founding

Henry Silverman, a business executive and private equity investor created Hospitality Franchise Systems (HFS) as a vehicle to acquire a number of hotel franchises in the early 1990s. Among Silverman’s purchases were such brands as Ramada and Howard Johnson's as well as Days Inn, which he was able to buy for $290 million (less than half what he had sold it for) after the company had filed for bankruptcy in 1991. Silverman quickly took Hospitality Franchise Systems public in a 1992 IPO.

HFS was among the fastest growing companies of its size in the 1990s and the company’s stock had risen from its IPO price of $4 per share to $77 per share by 1998. The company made a brief foray into the casino industry, but then spun off that business in November 1994 as National Gaming.[1] In 1996, Cendant purchased Sierra On-Line and Davidson & Associates for $2.2 billion. However in 1998, Henry Silverman led HFS into what would prove a disastrous merger with CUC International, a direct marketing company that operated Shoppers Advantage and Travelers Advantage (now part of Affinion Group). The $14 billion merger of HFS and CUC resulted in the formation of Cendant Corporation, which was formed in December 1997. Also, as part of the merger, Silverman announced he would reduce his day-to-day involvement with the company and assume the company’s chairmanship in preference of CUC’s founder and CEO Walter Forbes.

Just months after the merger, in April 1998 Cendant uncovered massive accounting improprieties at CUC which resulted in one of the largest financial scandals of the 1990s. At the time, Vice Chairman E. Kirk Shelton, was reported to have inflated the company's revenue by $500 million over a period of three years. When this report was released to the public, the resulting damage to the market value for the company was approximately $14 billion, with their stock tumbling from a high of $41 down to nearly $12. At the time, this fiasco was the largest case of...