Chapter 224: Chapter 224 Target: F1
Speaking of Bernie Ecclestone, the person who impressed Barron the most in his previous life was this head of F1 commercialization. At the age of nearly 90, he made his young model wife, who was 46 years younger than him, give birth to a son for him...
That was also his eldest son.
When he was nearly 90 years old and had a son, the eldest of his three daughters was already 65 years old...
That is to say, her eldest daughter can have a grandson as old as her son, and the eldest son's age is almost the same as that of his great-grandson.
Tamaran is Bernie Ecclestone's second daughter. She has a younger sister who is five years younger than her.
Bernie was born in 1930 and is 73 years old this year, while Tamarin is just 19 years old, nearly 30 years younger than her half-sister.
Yes, apparently Tamaran and her sister were both born to Bernie's second wife.
Tamaran's mother, Slavica Radic, is a supermodel from Yugoslavia. She fell in love with Bernie when she was 24 years old. At that time, the old man was already 51 years old. The age difference between the two was 27 years old...
It is also worth mentioning that Bernie is only 159cm tall, and he is 23cm shorter than his second wife...
It seems that the old man has mastered the art of eugenics. His last two wives were both tall models, and the Tamarin sisters also inherited their mother's height.
Barron feels that he and Bernie will have a lot to talk about in this regard. After all, the old man is a ruthless man who can successfully conceive at the age of 90...
However, this time Barron came to attend this F1 promotion reception, naturally not to ask the old man for advice on this, nor because of his daughter Tamaran...
"I heard you're interested in SLEC shares?"
After finding an excuse to get Tamaran away, Bernie Ecclestone said to Barron.
SLEC, the full name of which is Slavica Ecclestone Corp., controls the commercial rights of F1.
This company founded by Bernie, at that time, through his family company Bambino, only owned 25% of SLEC's shares, and the other 75% fell into the hands of SPEED Investment Company jointly established by Bayerischer Hof, JP Morgan Investment Bank and Lehman Brothers Bank.
At the same time, Bernie's commercial rights to F1 are also facing challenges, as SPEED, which is said to hold the majority of shares, is preparing to seize this right from Bernie.
Barron also took this opportunity to intervene and see if there was a chance to acquire SLEC and thus control the operation of F1, which is known as the "third largest sport in the world."
Bernie's relationship with F1 is complicated, and it starts much earlier...
The F1 event was founded in 1950. It was originally a completely amateur event with no source of income. The competition conditions were very simple. The track might be just a country road. The team's maintenance station was a temporary board house built on the side of the road. The drivers had to serve as mechanics and many people did not even receive a salary.
Either their families are very wealthy, or they have to work another job to support their families.
The situation of the racing team was not much better. The bosses put all their personal property on the line. For example, Enzo Ferrari decided to produce and sell Ferrari sports cars in order to raise money for the F1 team.
When Bernie bought the Brabham team, F1 had been running for 20 years. Although conditions in all aspects had improved, both event management and commercial operations were still very chaotic. There were no restrictions on whether the team should participate in the competition or whether the sponsors should pay, and the competition often fell into unpredictable embarrassing situations.
Bernie keenly saw the huge business opportunities hidden in F1.
In 1978, after being elected chairman of the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA), he began to polish this rough diamond.
FOCA is an organization established by the F1 teams themselves. Its mission is to coordinate the positions of the teams and take joint actions to gain more benefits.
If Bernie wants to implement his plan, he must first obtain the commercial rights of F1 from F1's administrator, the International Automobile Sport Federation (FISA).
Bernie made an important ally - Max Mosley, legal adviser of FOCA. The two joined forces to challenge FISA President Balest, threatening to break away from FISA's jurisdiction and form a new event. At that time, the manufacturer teams stood on the side of FISA, and the private teams all supported FOCA. F1 faced a major crisis of division.
Bernie knew the importance of Ferrari in F1. He went to Italy many times to lobby and finally got the support of Enzo Ferrari. The manufacturer team also turned to FOCA under the leadership of Ferrari. Under pressure, Balest had to hand over the commercial rights of F1 to FOCA.
Bernie risked investing enough upfront funds to ensure that the team that won the F1 race would get the prize money it deserved, and at the same time stipulated that any team that wanted to participate in an F1 race must sign a contract with FOCA to participate in all events.
This way, he can offer sponsors races with guaranteed participation from participating teams.
Bernie then began to sell television broadcasting rights - in an era when live sports broadcasts on television were not very popular, he had foreseen that this would be the most important source of income.
He persuaded TV stations to buy the rights to the entire F1 season as a package, rather than buying them one race at a time.
In this way, F1 competitions not only have a more stable income guarantee, but also greatly increase their exposure.
Bernie kept 60% of the income from TV broadcasting rights for himself and distributed only 40% to the teams, but no one raised any objections at the time because such a small income ratio was better than having no income at all before.
What the team owners could not have imagined was that in the following years, they would become wealthy by relying on this small proportion, and they became increasingly dissatisfied with the portion that Bernie took - although according to the current agreement, the team's share has increased from the original 40% to 63%.
Bernie knows very well that to keep F1 firmly in his hands, he needs not only money but also power.
He fully supported Mosley in taking over the chairmanship of the International Automobile Sport Federation, the International Automobile Federation and the International Automobile Tourism Association in 1991, 1993 and 1997 respectively, and merged the three organizations into the International Automobile Federation (FIA).
In this way, Mosley had unprecedented power, and his biggest supporter Bernie bought the F1 commercial rights from the FIA for a full 110 years from 2000 to 2110.
Yes, it was SLEC, the company founded by Bernie, that won the F1 operating rights for the next 110 years in 2000 for $360 million...
However, in 2000, Bernie's assets were not as much as they are later. In order to come up with the $360 million to purchase the F1 operating rights, he sold 75% of SLEC's shares to the German Kirch Group in 2000, on the premise of ensuring that he would dominate the commercial operations of F1.
However, the good times did not last long. In 2002, the Kirch Group declared bankruptcy, becoming the largest bankruptcy case in Germany since World War II.
In this process, 75% of SLEC shares held by the Kirch Group became the property of three creditor banks.
The three banks are Germany's Bayerischer Bank, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase.
These three banks hope that Bernie will hand over the management rights of F1.
At this time, Bernie Ecclestone's greatest source of wealth and power was the control of the management rights of F1, so he naturally would not sit idly by.
In the original time and space, he contacted the private equity fund CVC Investment Company, and then through certain means, secretly bought the shares held by the German Bayerischer Bank, which held the largest number of SLEC shares - they held 50% of SLEC shares.
This way, together with Bernie's own 25% stake, they controlled up to 75% of SLEC's shares.
The offensive and defensive situations changed, and finally Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase, two American banks, had no choice but to hold their noses and sell all their shares to CVC Investment Company, thus withdrawing from the competition for F1 operating rights.
Baron hopes to replace the role of CVC Investment Company and cooperate with Bernie Ecclestone to buy shares of SLEC.
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