Daily rental company easyCar.com will open two new European car rental sites in France and Switzerland by the end of this year.

Its new Paris site will be the second in the city and, says the company, is 'a direct result of the very high demand levels we have experienced over the past year at Place Vendome'.

And its opening in Geneva marks easyCar.com's first site in Switzerland - the fifth country it has entered over the past 18 months, the others being France, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Earlier this year, the group, which started trading in April 2000 as easyRentacar.com, secured £26 million of funding from a consortium which it said it would use to increase its European network.

Announcing the funding, easyGroup chairman Stelios Haji-Ioannou said: 'This funding represents an important milestone in the continued development of another one of my ventures, the fourth one to attract outside capital. The company can now continue to provide low cost, high quality car hire to more and more consumers around Europe.' (December 2001)