CVC is a huge holding company. The pressure CVC, through the members of individual companies’ officers, could bring to bear on FiA is incomprehensible. So CVC says, hey FiA, we don’t want really to see FOTA go to their own series, but we WILL support them if they do-heck, we got to make some money somewhere! So stop screwing around, get Mosley out, and get it right !!!

That is what gives teeth to FOTA’s demand for “I resign definitely and without fail no matter what.” over Max Mosley’s signature. Which, IMHO, will close the rift and all else is just a matter of hammering out what few small details remain.

CVC has too much invested in F1 to let Mosley “see F1 go down and burn to dust before he steps down by force”.

Crunch time has come for CVC, and CVC is about to kick some tail. Their 2 billion in debt doesn’t go away if FOTA go to a series of their own, and even if CVC did run the new series for FOTA, they’d still not make enough money to cover that debt.

The press is reporting today that CVC insiders say Bernie is about to be removed from his position and “kicked upstairs” to a nice secluded office where he can watch Roary the Race Car and dream of tall women.

Forcing FiA’s hand to vote “no confidence” on Mosley can’t be far behind. I believe CVC has already started the butt-kickin’.

Lehman must believe that the debt will be paid back and the shares will increase in value otherwise surely it would have dumped them just as it has offloaded its loans to home-owners who couldn’t afford to make the repayments. From the outside, F1 looks like it should be in a similar position.

After all, if the FOTA teams start a rival series, as they have been threatening, then F1′s revenues will collapse along with the value of shares in the sport which could fail to pay back its debt mountain now standing at $2.3bn. The noises coming from FOTA this weekend suggest that a rival series is on the cards again but Lehman’s eagerness to keep hold of the F1 shares and debt suggests otherwise.

Of course Lehman’s knowledge about the security of F1′s future will have come from none other than the sport’s boss Bernie Ecclestone and its majority owner, the finance firm CVC. They must be pretty confident they can avert a breakaway series and with a knowing wink Sylt says that the time to reveal their strategy will soon be upon us.

Indeed, Lehman was so eager to retain its 15% stake in F1′s holding company Delta Topco that it actually fought off CVC itself.

Lehman first became an F1 shareholder in 2002 when it took over a stake held by German media company Kirch after it went bust and failed to pay back a loan provided by the bank. Lehman sold its stake to CVC in 2006 but then reinvested in Delta Topco and provided $550m of the $2.8bn debt which CVC used to buy the sport.

However, Delta’s Articles of Association, the rules which govern its operation, give its directors the power to force any shareholder which goes bust to sell its stake for a fair price to a company of their choice. On October 10th last year, five days after Lehman Commercial Paper, the bank’s company which directly owned the F1 stake, went bust, it received a letter from Delta demanding that it sell its shares to certain funds for a fair price.

However, US bankruptcy court filings reveal that the fair price is actually discounted whereas, according to Lehman, “market value would yield a purchase price for the Formula One investment materially in excess of the fair price.” Accordingly it decided to move the shares and right to repayment of the debt into a new holding company containing the valuable assets in Lehman’s portfolio.

Lehman will emerge from bankruptcy as a healthy company having cast off all its worthless assets and debt which is not likely to be repaid. It doesn’t think its F1 investment falls into either category and so it will join Lehman’s other valuable assets.

CVC agreed to waive its rights entitling it to force bankrupt shareholders to sell their stakes to a company of its choosing and an insider says that the reason for this is that Lehman is “not selling it to a third party, they are just passing it from the left hand to the right hand…it’s effectively no change.” Nevertheless, CVC has written to Lehman saying that it has only waived its rights on this one occasion and this doesn’t mean it will do so in future.

So, F1 has managed to retain the same shareholders despite one being bankrupt. That’s quite a feat. Now let’s see how it manages to avoid a breakaway. Big business, never as transparent as it seems…lol.

If they leave hime to go in October how much harm can he still do to F1?

Lots

The only hope we have is if Mosley loses internal support. the only way this can happen is if a new promising candidate comes along and convinces the FIA council members to support him instead. Which I am glad to see happening slowly with Ari. the only way to win this war is from within. Take away that which gives Mosley the most power, and that is the support from his slave friends.

Maybe the information is right. Ok, fans would like a clean breakaway series without FIA and FOM, but it would much easier to bring CVC with them because they are the ones who have credible grounds for lawsuit (some teams have contracts) and could block or make harder negotiations with track owners and TV stations.

Anyway, now FOTA is the one creating the wedge between the other two parties (Max & Bernie’s favourite tactic for years) by giving CVC shareholders a way out to preserve some of their profits.

The pressure is now on Mosley who is alone because Bernie has been been deemed irrelevant in the current negotiations.

Again, if a breakaway series happens, I would prefer a clean one, but you don’t always get what you want.