McLaren's shareholders not happy

[revrange]

MissChief said:

Stands to reason as even without a title sponsorship they've said this season is one of their best funded.

that money comes from Honda, they got a $100m advance from Honda this season to build the 2015 car/hire staff for 2015. Honda want to hit the ground running.

[andyps]

ralphrj said:

That might have been one of the original thoughts behind the road car business but unfortunately it will not be providing the F1 team with funding to supplement their lack of sponsorship because:

1. the road car business has not been a financial success, and
2. McLaren don't actually own very much of their road car business (less than 4.5%).

I haven't checked the figures but McLaren have reported that the road car project has met or exceeded profit targets and is profitable so not sure what the basis for it not being a success is. In terms of ownership, isn't it part of the McLaren group? In which case it is owned by the group and that group has shareholders who are the same as for the F1 team and other divisions. Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

[spunkytherabbit]

BigBen said:

TheAngryDog said:

MG511 said:

TonyToniTone said:

Honda's 2009 car was pretty good.

With a dodgy double difuser and Merc engine.

Don't all teams try and bend the rules / find loop holes? Ross Brawn is an intelligent man, it wasn't his fault the rules were open to interpretation and that the other teams were slow to catch up.

Williams also had a double diffuser as did at least one other team (Toyota ?) Brawn / Honda did a better job of implementing it.

Brawn, as part of the technical working group in 2008, spotted that the 2009 regulations left interpretation open to create a double diffuser situation and advised them on how to close it. He was ignored. Hence why Brawn were 1) First to track with it and 2) Did SUCH a good job of making it work because they had longer on it to make it an integral part of the car.

And as Adrian Newey always says, there is no 'spirit of the regulations'. It is either legal or it isn't.

[ralphrj]

andyps said:

I haven't checked the figures but McLaren have reported that the road car project has met or exceeded profit targets and is profitable so not sure what the basis for it not being a success is.

McLaren certainly claim that McLaren Automotive Ltd (the road car business) has met or exceeded profit targets but:

1. without knowing what the profit targets were it is hard to know if that is true, and
2. reading their accounts paints a different picture.

The only year that they made a profit was 2013 when they made £4.5m (before tax). However, this profit was only possible because the shareholders had to convert their interest bearing loans into interest free loans or equity. I very much doubt that was part of the plan they set out for the investors. Without this restructure of the debt McLaren Automotive would have made another loss. In the 3 years before that they lost over £120m.

andyps said:

In terms of ownership, isn't it part of the McLaren group? In which case it is owned by the group and that group has shareholders who are the same as for the F1 team and other divisions. Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

Ownership of the the road car business is very different to other parts of McLaren.

McLaren Racing Ltd (the F1 team) is 100% owned by McLaren Group Ltd which in turn is owned by the Bahrainis, Ron Dennis and Mansour Ojjeh.

McLaren Automotive Ltd is owned by a group of investors, one of whom is McLaren Group Ltd. That shareholding is only 4.42%.

[andyps]

Thanks for that, interesting to know.

In terms of the road car division profit it does seem pretty reasonable that a start up car manufacturing business makes losses initially, and to turn a profit as soon as they did is pretty impressive, although I acknowledge the comment about the finance restructure.

[Mermaid]

Gaz. said:

Gaz 1/10/2014 said:

benters said:

when RD signs a perceived top driver, sponsorship will follow in my opinion. LH or similar will create lots of focus combined with Honda, and I further wonder if the smaller sponsors are waiting to see if a larger title sponsor signs up before committing themselves.

More and more specialist media are reporting that the Honda ICE is 3-4 months behind schedule, it is too thirsty and not powerful enough. Acording to these articles it hasn't been run with the Mclaren ERS because it is not ready either and typicly for Mclaren Omnicorse say they are trying something extreme with the hybrid system. The chassis for the Abu Dhabi test is nearly ready though, alternatively you can turn that on its head and say the PU has not been run in a chassis mule yet which is what was the cause of most of Renault's problems. WCC next year? They'll be lucky if they are scoring points at all next year by the sounds of it.

Well there you go. Slow, thirsty, some random extreme concept that doesn't work and 4 points from 7 rounds.

Would anyone like the lottery numbers for tomorrow's draw?

[Soul Reaver]

If you judge a team based on it's results then basically at F1 Mclaren are crap. It does not matter if it's the engine, the chassis, the driver, the weather, the tires. They are crap at what they do and have been for several years.

[Mermaid]

Soul Reaver said:

.. It does not matter if it's the engine, the chassis, the driver, the weather, the tires. They are crap at what they do and have been for several years.

Comes back to STRATEGY. Ron was good for McLaren F1 but has not been for a long while now.