Penske Automotive accepts offer, will be bought out

Deal includes the assets now embroiled in a significant battle over carrier liability

Penske Automotive Group (NYSE: PAG), a publicly-traded company that includes the current Penske-related companies involved in a closely-watched liability case, will become a private company with a buyout from two of its current corporate owners.

After a review of the July offer from Penske Corp and Mitsui & Co. Ltd., PAG said Thursday it had accepted the offer to sell itself to those two companies. What is being sold is the approximately 27.8% of Penske Automotive those two companies do not currently own.

After the deal is completed, Penske Corp., which is a private company, will own 64% of Penske Automotive. Mitsui will own the balance.

The purchase price is $212 per share. When the offer to take PAG private was first announced in July, the share price in the deal was $210 per share.

That price, according to the prepared statement released by Penske Automotive, is a premium of approximately 20.09% to the 60-day average and 26.17% to the 90-day volume average weighted prices of PAG stock for the period ended July 21, when the offer was made.

According to the company’s 10-K report to the Securities & Exchange Commission, Penske Automotive, whose key activity is automotive retail, had revenue in 2025 of approximately $27.5 billion from retail automotive dealerships, $3.4 billion from retail commercial truck dealers, and $922.6 million from commercial vehicle distribution and other operations. 

Its truck dealership operates as Premier Truck Group, which primarily sells Freightliner and Western Star trucks, both manufactured by Daimler Truck (DTG.DE).

Penske Automotive holds a 28.9% share in Penske Truck Leasing. In the 10-K, the company said Penske Transportation Solutions (PTS) is the “universal brand name for Penske Truck Leasing’s various businesses, which articulates the breadth of their services.”

“PTS is capable of meeting customers’ needs across the supply chain with a broad product offering that includes full-service truck leasing, truck rental, and contract maintenance along with logistics services, such as dedicated contract carriage, distribution center management, supply chain management, and dry van truckload carrier services,” the 10-K said.

It is carrier Penske Logistics and its brokerage affiliate, Penske Transportation Management (PTM), which are part of PTS, that find themselves in a case involving carrier liability that has drawn strong interest across the industry.

The chain of events in the case is that Penske Logistics secured a load of automotive seats, which it then brokered out to its affiliate PTM.

PTM then brokered the load to another carrier who in turn brokered the freight to yet another carrier. That carrier was involved in the fatal 2018 crash.

After a lower court victory that found Penske was not liable, the Penske companies were defeated on appeal by the Fifth Circuit, which ruled Penske Logistics, several steps away from the carrier that killed Lyndon Dean Meyer on the day after Christmas, could be held liable for that fatal crash.

Penske Logistics  is asking the full circuit for an en banc hearing to reconsider the appellate court decision in the Fifth Circuit.

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John Kingston

John has an almost 50-year career as a journalist, most of them covering commodities and markets. The largest part of his career was spent at Platts, now part of S&P Global Energy. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment. He was awarded the 2020 Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah International Energy Award for Lifetime Achievement for the Advancement of International Energy Journalism.