It also reflects an intriguing move by Renault to boost the profile of its sportscar brand and eventually generate more income around the F1 project, helped by the involvement of Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds and his associates Rob McElhenney and Michael B. Jordan.
To recap a consortium of three financial entities, Otro Capital, RedBird Capital Partners and Maximum Effort Investments, collectively known as the Investor Group, has paid €200m for a 24% stake in the team.
A works team taking on outside shareholders isn’t exactly a new idea – after all Mercedes only owns 33% of its Brackley operation after Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS took a stake.
Renault has made a huge commitment to Alpine and the F1 team, and clearly it didn’t necessarily need to bring in outside finance. What is more interesting for the company is the sports and entertainment marketing expertise that the Americans bring to the table.
It’s a little like those times on the Dragon’s Den TV show when an entrepreneur with a good idea surprises the would-be investors by saying that actually, he or she already has enough funding – what’s needed is a partner with the connections and reach to take things to the next level.
Alpine may be French to its core, but its CEO Laurent Rossi earned an MBA at Harvard, and worked for the well-known Boston Consulting Group and for Google before he returned to Europe. As such he has an international outlook that has no doubt played a role in sourcing investment in the US, while handily team principal Otmar Szafnauer is an American, which adds to the synergy with the new partners.
“They're going to help us on the monetisation side of the business,” says Rossi. “So strictly speaking, not on the sports side. People here [at Enstone] know what they're doing. People in Viry know what they're doing. They're going to continue doing what they're doing.
“They [the investors] are going to help us boost our revenue, hospitality, sponsoring, licensing, merchandising above and beyond what we had planned.
Source: Autosport