Formule.cz – Mumtalakat was completely taken over by McLaren

McLaren Group is owned by Bahrainis.

The investment fund of the Bahraini royal family is already a 100% owner of McLaren Group, which has a majority stake in McLaren Racing, which fields the McLaren team in the championship.

The buyout of the shares of the other co-owners was already agreed last December. McLaren’s luxury sports car business was not prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic, which also hit the F1 world hard. So the McLaren Group faced two financial challenges at once and had to take unpleasant measures, although everything was presented to the media with a smile. McLaren Group took a loan of 150 million British pounds from the National Bank of Bahrain, sold a minority stake in McLaren Racing and also sold its Technology Centre, its base in Woking, on which it also took a lease. Also, 1,000 employees were laid off.

When the launch of the Artura hybrid supercar was delayed, there was talk of Audi’s interest in taking ownership of the small British carmaker while also supplying power units to its F1 team. However, this did not happen. It is not a problem for an F1 team to be profitable at the moment, however, McLaren Racing must invest in the factory and technology in order to return to the top teams. And the car company probably lacked money even more. Now McLaren will not be in need of money, but the topic of sportswashing was discussed in the British Parliament only recently, and F1 and the Bahraini monarchy were also discussed, which is not ideal at all from a marketing point of view.

The investment fund now owns the entire car company and two-thirds of the F1 team. Photo: McLaren

The oldest team racing with a British license was founded by New Zealand racer Bruce McLaren. After his death, the financially weak team was taken over by Briton Ron Dennis and combined with his Philip Morris-sponsored Project Four stable, and then offered half to Mansour Ojjeh from Saudi Arabia. When the golden era with Honda came to an end, DaimlerChrysler (Mercedes) was offered to buy 40% of the company, leaving Dennis and Ojjeh with 30% each before they both sold half of their stake to Mumtalakat. When Daimler saw that it would not gain control of this team starting to build its own cars, it bought Brawn GP and sold the shares back to McLaren. The share of Bahrainis thus increased to 50 percent. After an unsuccessful return to the director’s chair from 2014 to 2016, Dennis agreed to sell his share to the remaining two co-owners, giving Mumtalakat a majority stake.

Since then it was necessary to raise financial capital several times and TAG sold percentages after the late Ojjeh, so last year the ownership structure of McLaren Group was as follows: Mumtalakat 56.4%, TAG Group 14.32%, Michael Latifi 9.84%, Favorita 5.78%, Perlman Investments 5.77%, McKal Holdings 5.24%, Acanitt 2.65%. However, while Mumtalakat has now gained 100 percent control of McLaren Automotive through McLaren Group, he is missing 33 percent of McLaren Racing, which McLaren Group sold to MSP Sports Capital investors after the outbreak of the pandemic.

Source: motorsport, opening photo: McLaren