John Malone Set To Pay $64B For Formula One
John Malone’s Liberty Media, which owns a collection of media, telecommunications and entertainments businesses, could announce it is investing in F1 as early as this week after talks with CVC Capital Partners, which has controlled the sport for a decade.
It is understood Liberty Media will initially buy a stake in Formula One of up to 20{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} before taking full control later in the year. The deal will value the sport at around £6.4bn (US$8.5bn).
An analysis last year by Formula Money found CVC has made $4.4bn from the sport. It now owns 35.5{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} of the stock in the sport’s parent company but has control as its shares have special voting rights. The other shareholders include Waddell & Reed, an American fund manager which has a stake of just under 20{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c}, while Bernie Ecclestone holds 5.3{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c} and his Bambino Trust another 8.5{b163ed859cc9a16ba73837184ee02d2cdeccd9aa6dd670f1698634a383290a0c}.
The future of Ecclestone, the chief executive of Formula One Group, will be one of the key decisions facing the new owner. The German magazine Auto, Motor und Sport reported on Sunday that a deal with Liberty Media is set to go ahead. Ecclestone also suggested he is likely to keep a key role in the sport. “I will do what I have always done. What role I play is my decision.”
Chase Carey, a key lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch at News Corporation and a non-executive director of Sky, is being lined up to become chairman of Formula One.
Malone and Murdoch have a long-running rivalry in the media industry. Malone has built up a global empire that includes Discovery Communications, the owner of the Discovery and Eurosport channels, Virgin Media and the Atlanta Braves baseball team. He was nicknamed Darth Vader by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, for his aggressive dealmaking.
Read more at HITC.
