Breakup
On October 23, 2005, Cendant Corporation announced its decision to split into four separate companies, citing a necessity to diversify in appealing to stockholders and in an attempt to increase the value of the post-split up company. These four categories include "Real Estate, Travel Distribution, Hospitality and Vehicle Rental Companies."
Cendant originally decided to spin off its Travel Distribution division as a separate company called Travelport, but on June 30, 2006, Cendant announced the sale of Travelport to an affiliate of the privately held Blackstone Group for $4.3 Billion. This sale closed on August 23, 2006.
During the fall of 2005 Progeny Marketing Innovations and Trilegiant were sold to private equity group Apollo Management. They changed their name in January 2006 to Affinion Group.
On July 31 of 2006, both the Cendant Real Estate division as well as the Cendant Hospitality division were spun off and became separate companies under the names Realogy and Wyndham Worldwide, respectively. Realogy was subsequently bought by Apollo.
The Cendant Car Rental Group, which owns Avis, Budget Rent A Car and Budget Truck Rental rental companies, became the sole remaining company under the Cendant name. The company changed its name to Avis Budget Group and the Cendant name has been completely retired.
Former shareholders of Cendant received as a dividend for each share of Cendant common stock held on the dividend distribution date 1/4 share of common stock of Realogy, 1/5 share of common stock of Wyndham Worldwide and the remaining shares were subject to a reverse split resulting in shareholders receiving 1 share of Avis Budget Group for each 10 shares of Cendant previously held.