Former Partners Joining BoycottNRA Cause
Enterprise Holdings (the parent company for Alamo, Enterprise and National rental car brands) and First National Bank of Omaha are both severing ties with the National Rifle Association. Both entities had long relationships with the NRA that are ending in the wake of the recent mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Both Enterprise Holdings and First National Bank of Omaha are privately held organizations and as a result are not accountable to stock holders. As a result the financial implications of this decision (positive or negative) may not be publicly available. However, the publicly held NRA partners are certainly paying attention. Money talks. We’ll see who walks.
Companies may be starting to rethink their ties to the National Rifle Association in the wake of last week’s massacre at a Florida high school, with a major bank and car-rental giant announcing Thursday they were dropping partnership programs with the NRA.
First National Bank of Omaha, the nation’s largest privately owned bank, said Thursday it will not renew its contract with the NRA for a branded Visa card.
“Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA,” a bank spokesman said in a statement. “As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card,”
The bank had a relationship with the NRA for more than a decade, and the card touted a $40 cash-back bonus, enough to reimburse a one-year NRA membership.
Later Thursday, privately held Enterprise Holdings Inc. — the parent company of the Enterprise, Alamo and National car rental brands — said it will end its partnership with the NRA, which gave NRA members discounts. In tweets, Enterprise Holdings said that program will end next month.
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Enterprise Holdings said “We ended the discount program, effective March 26.”
Both First National Bank of Omaha and the Enterprise Holdings brands were named Tuesday by the website ThinkProgress as among 22 major companies involved in corporate partnerships with the NRA. Some activists have called for consumer boycotts of companies that do business with the NRA.
Experts said severing such business ties is not without risk.
