August 18, 2024 — CDK Global has agreed to pay $100 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by 25 dealers seven years ago as part of a series of antitrust allegations. The lawsuit alleges that the DMS vendor conspired with competitor Reynolds and Reynolds to eliminate competition in the Data Integration Services market,… Continue Reading
August 13, 2024 – A group of 10 VC firms participated in a $3.7 million seed round in Chaiz, the industry’s first comparison marketplace for extended car warranties. Auto and tech industry veterans Ryan Hartman, Philippe Koenig, and Reto Bolliger, launched the Austin-based startup which is focused on bringing transparency, choice, and digitization to the extended car warranty market. It is… Continue Reading
August 8, 2024 — Tomball, TX-based 1876 Partners acquired Maverick Document Signings, Inc. (Mavsign) this week. Founded in 2007, Mavsign, led by CEO Jeff Eichelberger, grew into one of the country’s leading solutions for remote document closing, ID technology, fraud detection and mitigation services for automotive and recreational dealerships. The company has managed more than… Continue Reading
July 9, 2024—Impel is announcing this morning that it has acquired Outsell for more than $100 million cash plus equity. The deal, closed in late June, capped off a busy month of acquisition and investment activity in the auto retail space, during which nine transactions were announced. The acquisition pairs Impel, an early pioneer in… Continue Reading
June 30, 2024 — As expected, automotive software vendor Solera filed publicly Friday for an initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The Vista Equity-owned company filed confidentially in May indicating a likely IPO later this summer. Friday’s paperwork did not disclose the price or number of shares Vista plans to sell… Continue Reading
June 27, 2024 — Late Thursday afternoon, CDK Global began rebooting the systems for a test group of dealers, following a two-pronged cyber attack more than a week ago. (UPDATED July 11 — According to a CNN report, CDK likely paid a ransom of $25 million to the hackers on June 21 — in numerous… Continue Reading
June 26, 2024 — Here we go again. We’re nearly 25 years into this century, and already, the industry has had to grapple with at least five events that have severely impacted operations at U.S. dealerships and the vendors serving them. And again, dealers and the industry will survive. Not since 1918 – 1945, when… Continue Reading
May 6, 2024 — A flurry of transactions in April indicates that investment and acquisition activity among tech players in the automotive retail space is starting to heat up after a slow 2023 and early 2024. Anchoring the activity are three pending monster deals that, if completed, could raise multiples for other companies looking for… Continue Reading
March 12, 2024 — As J.D. Power was completing the acquisition of the European-based Autovista Group a few weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that the data analytics and consumer intelligence firm was on the market itself for approximately $8 billion. The $8 billion number might raise some eyebrows, but it is right in the neighborhood of… Continue Reading
November 14, 2023 — Dealership website provider DealerOn acquired competitor fusionZONE Automotive last week. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Dealership executive Brett Sutherlin and his wife founded fusionZONE in 2009. Primus Capital acquired a majority investment in 2017. Sutherlin sold a second company, LeadRevenue, to Primus in 2021. Sutherlin now is the… Continue Reading