Proton has an option to buy Lotus F1 Team
Currently, the Lotus F1 Team is 100% owned by Genii Capital while Lotus is only the title sponsor. However, Proton, the parent company of the manufacturer, has an option to acquire 50% of the former Renault team.
According to information from Pitpass, this option was offered by its owner when Proton decided to make a loan to the team totaling 35 million pounds sterling. This amount corresponds to the debt that the team owed to its two main financial backers.
Indeed, Lotus F1 owed 20 million pounds to Renault and 15.3 million to the Lithuanian bank Snoras. As clever financiers, Genii financed the acquisition of its team with a sum borrowed from the seller! This change in loan recipients thus provides protection against a potential seizure of the team’s assets in case of non-repayment of the loan contracted with the bankrupt bank.
It remains to be seen if the manufacturer will indeed exercise this option. In fact, over the past few months, paddock rumors suggested that it would be Genii Capital buying Lotus Cars, whose financial situation is far from booming. Indeed, it recorded a pre-tax loss of 21.4 million pounds while its presence in Formula 1 alone costs at least 25 million pounds per year. This sum must be increased by the cost of its presence in other categories (GP2, GP3, IndyCar…).
Similarly, its parent company is not in excellent financial shape, as the Malaysian government was forced to sell its 43% stake to DRB-Hicom for $410 million last January, so that billionaire Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary could attempt to improve its financial situation.
It is therefore quite possible that Proton will never exercise its option, but that it serves as a bargaining chip in a potential acquisition of Lotus by the Luxembourg investment fund.
With the participation of RacingBusiness.fr
