APRIL 15, 2004

HSBC and Jaguar

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank will be staying with Jaguar Racing in 2005 - if the bank decides to stay in Formula 1. HSBC did receive an approach from McLaren some months ago but told the Woking team that it was not interested. McLaren later approached Credit Suisse about a deal but it may be that McLaren put out some rumours about an HSBC deal because it was negotiating with a Chinese bank about a major deal in the future. The HSBC-Jaguar deal is much more than meets the eye. HSBC is the Ford Motor Company's chief bank and it derives a large amount of income from Ford. The sponsorship of Jaguar was seen as a way in which HSBC kept Ford sweet, while at the same time helping HSBC spread its branding around the world.

HSBC is very keen to expand in China and was one of the companies bidding for the title sponsorship of the Chinese GP. That deal did not come off and now HSBC will almost certainly stay on at Jaguar, although if the team can land a title sponsor HSBC will probably play a slightly smaller role. Jaguar is talking to a variety of different US corporations about a title sponsorship deal for 2005 and beyond.