McLaren has had an injection of $275 million from a company called Nidala (BVI) Limited, for the purchase of 888,135 ordinary shares in the holding company McLaren Group Ltd. This amounts to 10 percent of the share capital of the business, and values the firm at $2.75 billion. This will greatly improve the McLaren balance sheet, as the firm took on debt to finance the purchase of the shares previously owned by Ron Dennis.
“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," says executive chairman Shaikh Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa.
The identity of those behind Nidala remains unclear but there has been speculation that it is a vehicle for the Latifi family from Canada, being a diminutive of NIcholas DAniel LAtifi, who currently races Formula 2 with the DAMS team and has ambitions to become a Formula 1 driver in the future. His father Michael Latifi and mother Marilena are regularly to be seen in the F1 paddock and have been spending a great deal of time with McLaren in recent times. Having said that, it has been known for some time that Michael Latifi was looking to invest in a racing team, not in order to ease his son's path to Formula 1, but simply because he sees it as a good investment at the moment. This is presumably based on the belief that the F1 "franchises" will be worth a lot more money once the new commercial arrangements are agreed for 2021 and beyond. This will definitely be the case if there is a budget cap and if the OTT television streaming delivers the revenues that it is expected to deliver. Being involved in an F1 team could help Nicholas Latifi find a drive in F1, as McLaren may be able to deliver technological help to smaller teams, as it used to do with Force India. Latifi still has a lot to do to prove that he is worthy of an F1 drive. This is his third full season in F2 (or GP2). He finished 16th in 2016 and fifth last year, with a string of podium finishes and a Sprint Race win. Thus far in 2018 has been overshadowed by his team-mate Alexander Albon, although both drivers have had problems at the start of the races. He was announced as a Renault test driver in 2016 and in the Force India reserve driver this year.
Money is not a problem for Latifi as he comes from a family network that is one of the wealthiest in Canada, far wealthier than the Strolls. His father is the owner and CEO of food conglomerate Sofina, which is a big player in meat processing with fresh, frozen, and cooked chicken and turkey products, as well as sliced deli meats, sausages, and turkey bacons; fish products; dry-cured salami, olive oil, and other Italian products. His mother Marilena is a member of the Saputo Family, which founded a dairy business in Montreal in 1954 and is now one of the biggest dairy businesses in the world, operating in 40 countries, with sales of over $16 billion a year. The family is the naming sponsor of the Saputo Stadium, the home of the Montréal Impact of Major League Soccer. The family is reckoned to be worth around $11 billion. The firm is publicly-traded but the family retains control of much of the company stock.
Source: JSNL
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