Genii Capital chief Gerard Lopez does not look back at his time as the owner of Lotus as a failure despite the team costing him a small fortune before he resold it to Renault.
Lopez told AFP, “My foray with Lotus was not a failure. We took over the team by investing €40 million in debt repurchasing and saved 450 jobs. The team had no sponsors but we attracted many of them.”
“But when we reached an operational equilibrium, the costs exploded and the sponsors left. We could have closed but we decided to sell, to save 540 employees.”
“The team had no debts to its suppliers when we sold to Renault. There was €130 million in debt but that was to the shareholders,” he insisted.
On the positive side, Lopez was instrumental in getting Kimi Raikkonen back into Formula 1 after his post-Ferrari sabbatical. He was also a big advocate of Romain Grosjean and rescued his F1 career.
But the project hemorrhaged money. During the 2015 Japanese Grand Prix, Lotus were locked out of their hospitality unit, stemming from unpaid bills from the race organizers in Japan from the previous year.
There were also reports that Raikkonen was paid late during the course of the 2013 season.
On 30 September 2015, it was announced that Renault had signed a letter of intent to buy a controlling stake of Lotus F1 from Genii Capital. This came after Lotus were bailed out by Renault after falling behind in income tax and insurance payments to the British Government.
In the end Renault paid a mere £1 to take over the Lotus Formula 1 team when the deal was concluded in December 2015.
Lopez’s Genii Capital retained a small stake in Renault F1 Sport.
Read the full story at GRAND PRIX 247
No comments:
Post a Comment