BUSINESS NEWS

Mclaren’s new investor

Mclaren have their first major new investor in more than 10 years following the decision of Canadian businessman Michael Latifi to buy 10 per cent of the Mclaren Group via his Nidala company.

Latifi paid £203.8m for his shares, which is made up of new equity in the Group. It makes Latifi the third largest shareholder in Mclaren, behind Bahrain’s Mumtalakat investment fund, which owns about 56 per cent, and long-time shareholder Mansour Ojjeh of TAG on about 14 per cent. There are four other minority shareholders, which Mclaren will not reveal.

The purchase follows the departure last year of former chairman Ron Dennis, whose 25 per cent shareholding was bought out by Mumtalakat and Ojjeh in June 2017. It is not related to the £600m bond issued by Mclaren last year, which was used to fund Dennis’ £275m pay-out, off-set the loss of income caused by the team’s decision to split from Honda and use Renault customer engines, and to invest in Mclaren Applied Technologies.

Latifi, the chairman of the Canadian food processing giant Sofina, is the father of Formula 2 driver Nicholas Latifi, Force India’s reserve driver. His buy-in has raised speculation that it could lead to some driving role for Latifi at Mclaren in 2019, but sources insist that is not the case and that there is no connection between the father’s business deal and the son’s racing career. Latifi said he had been motivated to buy into Mclaren because he “had been an admirer of the Mclaren brand and its businesses for some time”.

He added: “Mclaren is a unique organisation in automotive, racing and technology, with exciting longterm growth prospects, which is why I have made this investment. I am proud to be part of Mclaren and this incredible brand.”

Mclaren Group executive chairman Shaikh Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa of Bahrain said: “This injection of capital is a vote of confidence in our future strategy and the group remains as focused as ever in positioning for growth.”

The investment comes at an uncertain time for the team. The car lacks obvious major sponsorship, although Zak Brown, recently made chief executive officer of Mclaren Racing, says he has raised more than $20m in new backing, including a fuel supply deal with Petrobras, and new deals with Dell computers and consumer electronics company HTC.

Petrobras has its name on the cars this year, but will not actually start to supply fuel and oil until 2019, giving them time to develop the requisite technology to use in today’s complex turbo hybrid engines. Mclaren are using BP Castrol, the same as Renault, in the interim. There are also ongoing management changes at the top of Mclaren following their disappointing performance this season (see pages 22-26).

LATIFI PAID £203.8M FOR HIS SHARES... IT MAKES LATIFI THE THIRD LARGEST SHAREHOLDER INM CLAREN