Hartford firms sells 50% stake to french company

[The Voice of Reason]

LAZ is a Hartford based parking lot management company. The article says that they have over 2000 employees nationwide. I am sure most of them are on site parking attendants. If you look at the link below you will see that LAZ operates almost half of the parking in Hartford.

http://www.enjoyhartford.com/core/parking_map.pdf

The article in the courant puts a fairly positive spin on things. It says the company will stay based in Hartford. It says the sale of the stake will infuse the company with capitol and allow for signifigant aquisitions.

so my questions are as follows... is this

does VINCI Park own other companies in America? if not do they intend on keepin LAZ in Hartford long term and growing the business from here? If so this would be a good thing. If VINCI Park owns another US based company I would be nervous of loosing this employer.

How many of these lots in Hartford does LAZ own vs. operate? Would LAZ or VINCI Park be more likely to sell flat lots for development?

anyone know any of these answers?

I know its not really a big deal of an article but if you look at that PDF map, you can see just how much of downtown LAZ has controll over.

[The Voice of Reason]

the HBJ has an article about LAZ now buying a Houston parking firm. Lets hope the administrative positions move to Hartford. This French investor could lead to job growth in Hartford.

http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article_li...=HBJTODAY#A4205

I <3 the HBJ

[The Voice of Reason]

LAZ buys another Texas company

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-bizdigb...0,1761568.story

It looks like the last one I posted about was actually dallas based (Classified Parking, a parking company with 95 parking locations in Texas and New Mexico. This acquisition will add 15,600 spaces to LAZ?s nationwide portfolio)

But today they bought a Houston based firm.

LAZ Parking has acquired Apex Parking System of Houston

The deal adds 31 new parking locations to the company's portfolio. The company now manages a portfolio of 360,000 parking spaces nationwide.

In 2007, LAZ Parking entered into a strategic partnership with European operator VINCI PARK. Together, they now control over 1.28 million spaces worldwide.