The paper s story doesn t mention the consolidation of the car-rental industry until the seventh par

The rental car business is a highly concentrated industry controlled by four companies. It s about to get much more concentrated, if Hertz s $2.3 billion bid for Dollar Thrifty passes its antitrust reviews.
The merger s potential effects on competition and consumer prices should be a primary focus of news coverage phoenix conference hotel of the deal. Relatively few people hold Hertz or Dollar Thrifty shares. Lots of people rent cars.
The paper s story doesn t mention the consolidation of the car-rental industry until the seventh paragraph, and even then it s only in passing and after two graphs of corporate press release blather that tells us absolutely nothing. Contrast that to The Wall Street Journal , which puts consolidation in the lede:
Hertz Global Holdings Inc. said late Sunday it agreed to buy Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc. in a deal valued at about $2.3 billion, a move that would cap more than a decade of consolidation in the U.S. rental-car industry and bring the number of major players to three from what was once nine.
While the NYT has room for the standard grease-your-sources two paragraphs of information about which lawyers and banks advised the parties on the deal, there s no detail about what most New York Times readers would actually care about: the concentration of a $23 billion-a-year industry.
So here s some: The top three companies in that industry Enterprise, Hertz, and Avis already control 87 percent of sales, according to AutoRentalNews numbers . By gobbling up No. 4, Dollar Thrifty, the top three would then control 94 percent phoenix conference hotel of sales.
Fewer competitors usually means higher prices for consumers and higher profit margins for the remaining players in an industry, which is a primary motivation for consolidating an already-concentrated business.
That s why shares in Avis Budget Group (as you can see, itself a product phoenix conference hotel of consolidation) jumped 10 percent phoenix conference hotel at the opening bell and settled up 4 percent for the day. Or as Reuters, in a weak piece, euphemistically phoenix conference hotel put it , In a sign that investors welcomed consolidation of the industry, Avis shares also rose 4 percent to $16.63.
It s context readers need to know much more than Hertz was advised by Lazard, Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche phoenix conference hotel Bank and the law firms Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Debevoise phoenix conference hotel & Plimpton and Jones Day, which seems to be a problem caused by having DealBook cover the news for the general paper.
Not necessarily. phoenix conference hotel Sure, maybe in a corporatist, protectionist, highly-regulated economy like the U.S.'; but not in an actually free-market economy, where govt "regulations" are not preventing new firms or small firms from entering and competing.
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