APRIL 28, 2003

A question of arbitration...

The Williams And McLaren teams took Bernie Ecclestone to arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce in Switzerland more than a year ago because of a supposed agreement between them and Ecclestone over the teams getting a percentage of the money raised by a sale of the SLEC company as part of the settlement over the 1998 Concorde Agreement.

The two teams reckoned that they had each been promised one percent of the money raised in the event of a flotation and had also negotiated a similar deal if the company was sold privately. The team felts that they had documents that covered this eventuality but the ICC did not agree and the claim was rejected. If the claim had been successful each team would have been owed $20.3m by SLEC, allowing for the payment which should have been made and interest which they would be due.

The teams were also ordered to pay SLEC's costs, which are believed to be more than $1m.