While "growth again!" was the original, jubilant theme for the European Rental Association's annual convention in Amsterdam in June, by the time the convention, came around, a question mark had replaced the exclamation mark in recognition of the fact that recovery was more complicated than had been expected. For the ERA's president, Gerard Deprez - who heads up Loxam, the largest equipment rental company in Europe - the convention was an opportunity to point out that the recovery, and a return to rental growth, could not be taken for granted. He said, "We all thought that 2010 should have signalled the end of the crisis, but we are only just coming out, and the recovery will be lengthy and erratic. "If, for most rental companies, the low point of the crisis has definitely passed, we nonetheless acknowledge that recovery is not taking place everywhere and that it is still highly uncertain, even bearing risks of relapse."
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