JANUARY 5, 2004

The future of Jordan Grand Prix

There are reports this morning in The Sun newspaper in London suggesting that Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, the oligarch who cashed out in Russia and moved west, making his name by buying the Chelsea soccer club, is on the verge of buying the Jordan team. The Sun reports that there have been four meetings between Eddie Jordan and Abramovich and suggests that the Russian is willing to pay $270m for the team. This is way above what the team is worth and faced by such a bid Eddie Jordan may finally conclude that it is time to get out of the business as he is never likely to get such an offer again.

This may help to explain the recent rumours that Jordan is talking to Jacques Villeneuve about a deal for 2004 and beyond.

Abramovich has a fortune estimated to be worth $6bn from businesses which he acquired from Boris Berezovsky, an associate of Boris Yeltsin, who acquired firms when Yeltsin privatised the major state-owned enterprises in the early 1990s. Abramovich funded the election campaigns of President Vladimir Putin and was known as The Kremlin's Banker but in recent years he saw that the powerful clique of Russia's top businessmen were going to come under attack from Yeltsin and started to sell off his assets and decided to leave the country. He has sold his shareholdings in Sibneft for $3bn and his shares in an aluminium company raised another $3bn. He has reinvested some of the money in the purchase of Chelsea Football Club and was a guest at the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring last year.