Business in brief: Avis founder dies at 92

Warren Avis, a canny entrepreneur for decades after selling the nation’s first car rental business to be located at airports, died Tuesday. He was 92.

A decorated bomber pilot with the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II, Avis formed his car rental company in 1946 at airports in Miami and Ypsilanti, Mich., with an investment of $85,000. He started with two employees and fewer than 200 cars.

Avis said he got the idea for the business when he was a pilot and couldn’t find ground transportation once he arrived at airports.

New York

Times investors withhold votes

New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. acknowledged shareholder frustrations at the company’s annual meeting Tuesday, where investors delivered another rebuke to the newspaper company’s financial performance by withholding 42 percent of their votes for four directors.

Sulzberger pointed to the “tremendous dislocations and challenges that the digital world has created for us and for all in our industry, most obviously in financial performance. Even as we see strong digital revenue growth,” he said, “we continue to see declines in our print revenue.”

Like other newspaper publishers, the Times has been struggling in its core newspaper business as many readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet. Sulzberger promised to keep costs in control and to further build up the company’s print and online businesses.

Windhoek, Namibia

Alexander vows fealty to Namibia

Fugitive businessman Jacob “Kobi” Alexander has taken out full-page ads and erected billboards touting his commitment to Namibia, where a judge planned a hearing Wednesday on whether to send him to the United States to face trial on stock-options fraud charges.

Alexander, the former chief executive of voicemail software maker Comverse Technology Inc., was arrested Sept. 26 in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, at the request of the FBI after a two-month manhunt.