F1: Racing to stock market float?

Majority owner cashing in on Asian interest
Formula One could be worth $10 billion -- and there are plans to float 20 per cent of it on the stock market. London-based private equity company CVC Capital Partners is reportedly looking at offloading almost a third of its 63.4 per cent stake in F1 on the Singapore Stock Exchange mid-year, hoping to collect about $2 billion for the stake.

Singapore is favoured for the listing of the shares that would be offered to investors because of the perceived growing interest in F1 in Asia following the premier motor racing world championship's expansion in the region in recent times, including a grand prix in Singapore since 2008.

India and Korea have been added to the F1 calendar in the past two years, Malaysia has been part of it for a decade, Japan much longer, and China has become a regular part of it too this century and will host its annual GP in Shanghai this weekend.

Australia also has held F1 GPs in the Asian timezone for a quarter of a century, initially in Adelaide and since the mid-1990s in Melbourne.

F1's 81-year-old supremo Bernie Ecclestone has insisted that he would continue in his role if there were to be a stock market float of part of the business. Ecclestone, who has controlled F1 for more than 30 years, owns 5.3 per cent of the business, while his former wife Slavica (pictured with Bernie) has 8.5 per cent.

The administrators of failed investment bank Lehman Brothers hold 15.3 per cent. CVC bought its majority shareholding in F1 in 2005 and 2006 using $2.5 billion of borrowed money.

News of the planned float on the Bloomberg financial wire service comes just a couple of weeks after Ecclestone secured the agreement of top teams Ferrari, Red Bull Racing and McLaren to remain in F1 under a new Concorde Agreement due to take effect next year.

The Concorde Agreement sets out the commercial terms under which teams participate in F1. Ferrari, the sport's oldest and most revered team, invariably receives special commercial treatment from Ecclestone.

Red Bull Racing has won the past two world championships with young German driver Sebastian Vettel, while Australian Mark Webber is its other driver.

McLaren is an eight-time world champion team that is the pacesetter this year.

Under the existing Concorde Agreement the 11 F1 teams reportedly share in half the sport's earnings.

According to CVC's website F1 has annual income of $1.55 billion, which is mainly from race fees and TV rights.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Italy's Agnelli family, who control Ferrari's parent company Fiat, showed interest in buying CVC's F1 stake last year, but the phone-hacking scandal at News in Britain has since preoccupied the media company.

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