MARCH 29, 2006

CVC Capital Partners completes F1 buyout

CVC Capital Partners has completed its purchase of all the shares in SLEC, the holding company of the Formula One group of companies. The 14.175% of SLEC which CVC did not own belonged to the investment bank Lehman Brothers but this has now come under CVC's control.

The next step in the consolidation of the group is expected to be the purchase of Allsport Management, a sub-contractor of Formula One, which looks after trackside signage, corporate hospitality and official supplier programmes for the sport. This ie expected to be acquired by CVC for something in the region of $300m. This will mean that all of F1's revenues will be under the control of a single company.

CVC is close to an agreement with the remaining Formula 1 teams for a five-year extension of the Concorde Agreement but this is unlikely to be signed until the negotiations with the FIA over the rules are completed at the end of June. Despite reports that a deal is close there is still much negotiation to be done and to sign up now would weaken the hand of the car manufacturers in their talks with the FIA - and that would not be very clever.

CVC must still sell its subsidiary Dorna, which controls the commercial rights to the MotoGP championship, before the Formula One deal will be officially cleared by the European Union.