AndreaModa wrote:I don't really quite understand who actually owns F1, the way I see it is the CVC own the rights to the sport and effectively run it, but have installed Ecclestone as the head honcho of the operation. When exactly did CVC purchase the 'rights' and off whom? The FIA?
When Bernie packs up, it'll be either Arabs stepping in, or some CEO of CVC or another large multi-national company and things will hit the fan because they'll run it like a business (which granted it is at the moment, but remember Bernie both raced in and owned a team in the sport and so still cares greatly about the sporting aspect of it, it's just he's forced to try and make money out of it by his employers).
The only way I can see F1 continuing sustainably post-Bernie is if another former team owner or someone from the FIA like Todt, or any of the others who sit on the council come in to replace him. Otherwise things will most likely go pear-shaped, and fast...
Here is how it goes - in 1995, Ecclestone buys the commercial rights from the FIA for a 14 year period, paying the FIA an annual fee in return (and, incidentally, was partially behind the teams vetoing the Concorda agreement - because the rights gave Ecclestone the right to commercialise the names of the teams, which they objected to, quite rightly seeing those names as their intellectual property). Bernie created SLEC Holdings (although this company would be reformed and renamed many times), which was the holding company, and transferred the ownership to his wife in 1996 ahead of a flotation on the stock market in 1997 (which is how she came into ownership of the company, and why Bernie' divorce was so expensive for him).
The shares of the company have gone through a number of different owners (and the reason that Bernie lost a lot of his shares and power in FOM was due to legal action by three banks, Bayerische Landesbank, JPMorgan Chase and Lehman Brothers, who were the biggest shareholders at the time, but had minority representation on the board of directors, where Bernie had the most representation).
However, the main interest is what happened in 2005 - that year, CVC Partners came along, and they bought out Bayerische Landesbank, a sizeable proportion of the shares owned by Bernie, along with a sizeable amount of the JP Morgan shareholding. In 2006, they bought Lehman Brothers out as well, and with that, they took control of the company with approximately 70% of the shares in their hands. JPMorgan Chase hold around 20%, and Ecclestone now holds only the remaining 10% (although, shrewd as he is, he used the money CVC paid him for his shares in FOM to buy shares in CVC). That said, realising that he is very effective at what he does, neither the banks or CVC Partners wanted to move Bernie out, and so they have left him to run the commercial activities which, by and large, he has done fairly well.
So, what is most likely to happen, when Bernie is no longer running the show, is CVC Partners will either take over day to day operations, or they will nominate someone to take over. I hope that it is the latter, because I am not sure that the interests of the sport would be best served by a group of venture capitalists in charge (after all, it is because they took on so much debt to buy the company that the tracks are being bled dry - their fees are paying the interest and capital on CVC's debt).
. He's more or less orchestrated single handedly one of the World's major sporting franchises for decades, despite "civil wars" & endless controversies. Nothing goes on without Bernie's approval or knowledge....It takes a special ability to do that, some luck & it's never going to make one popular....
