Williams sells tech arm

The company behind the Williams formula One team has sold its engineering arm to a private equity fund run by an old friend of Cabinet minister Michael Gove.

Williams Grand Prix holdings said EMK Capital, owned by business partners Mark Joseph and Gove’s Oxford University friend edmund Lazarus, had bought a majority stake in Williams Advanced engineering (WAe) for an undisclosed sum.

The business, which works in cutting-edge fields such as ultra-lightweight materials, was launched in 2011 to commercialise technologies developed for f1. Its expertise in aerodynamics was recently used to improve how cool air is kept inside supermarket fridges.