Ecclestone shows powerful grip on F1
After Bernie Ecclestone took to the witness stand last Wednesday, his QC told the High Court that the Formula One chief’s eyesight is not what it was, and his hearing is impaired. But, in three days of giving evidence in defence of a $140m legal claim against him and others, the 83-year-old Mr Ecclestone has shown his instinct for power has not been dimmed by advancing years.
“I really don’t know what limit anybody could put on my authority,” Mr Ecclestone said on his second day of evidence. “I shall run the business the way I always have run it, with all the different shareholders that we’ve had, and the different companies, or whatever. And I will continue as I do today.” This determination to remain in control of F1, whoever owns it, is at the heart of the case brought by German media group Constantin Medien, which claims that F1 was undervalued at the time of its sale to private equity group CVC in 2005-06. Its case rests on showing that Mr Ecclestone was engaged in a “corrupt bargain” to undersell F1 with Gerhard Gribkowsky – the former Bayerische Landesbank chief risk officer who was jailed in 2012 for eight and a half years for accepting $44m from Mr Ecclestone and Bambino, an Ecclestone family trust. Constantin’s QC Philip Marshall charted the events leading up to the sale in chronological order: how BLB accumulated a 47 per cent stake in F1 when a previous owner went bankrupt; how Gribkowsky proved a formidable opponent to Mr Ecclestone; how Mr Ecclestone became concerned at BLB’s plans to stay in F1 for the long term; and how other would-be buyers were spurned by Mr Ecclestone as he warmed to the interest of CVC, which wanted him to remain in charge. All this may feel historical. Indeed, when asked about meetings, memos, letters and events from that period, Mr Ecclestone said time and again that he could not recall most of them. “Today, I don’t remember the things that happened three days ago,” he explained. He added that he signed so many documents drawn up by lawyers and accountants he often had “no idea what I’m signing”. He was too busy running F1. But they are being cited now because of last year’s Gribkowsky trial in Munich – and those $44m of payments, which Mr Ecclestone kept secret from the F1 board, even after they came to light. This reawakened Constantin’s long-held suspicion about the value extracted for BLB’s stake, in which it held a commercial interest. Sitting at the back of court were BLB representatives. Mr Ecclestone repeated to the High Court what he said at the Munich trial: that he was being “shaken down” by Gribkowsky’s “insinuations” over his tax affairs. His £10m contribution to that $44m was a “cheap insurance policy”, Mr Ecclestone told the High Court. But that, said Philip Marshall QC, for plaintiffs Constantin, was implausible. Mr Ecclestone has most certainly been shaken by some of Mr Marshall’s grilling. On his third day of evidence, he complained that while the Constantin legal team had months to examine hundreds of documents “and pick out points”, he himself had not. The F1 boss told Justice Newey he wanted to go over evidence he had been given the previous day. However, what has emerged from all of Mr Ecclestone’s testimony is a brusque, unyielding management style spanning many years. He revealed his liking for shredding documents and letters, and his dislike of shareholder democracy. “I’ve never been interested in corporate governance and I’m not today either,” he said. No surprise, perhaps, to the many who have crossed his path over the decades. But, as he prepares for a fourth day on the witness stand, the way he has kept control of F1 has never been subject to such public scrutiny.