Speaking at the launch of McLaren’s new road-going sports car, the MP4-12C, McLaren team boss, Martin Whitmarsh, has confirmed that the Woking-based outfit has bought back the majority of Mercedes’ shares.
Mercedes owned around 40 per cent of McLaren but the Stuttgart-based manufacturer now has as little as an 11 per cent stake in the team.
Mercedes announced that they were to part-ways with McLaren back in November 2009 when they bought a 75 per cent share of BrawnGP along with investment company, Aabar Investments.
The deal for McLaren to buy back the stakes from Mercedes, part of the Daimler AG group, was expected to take until 2011 but Whitmarsh confirmed the deal had been done and confirmed that Mercedes now own only a small proportion of the British team.
“I think it is about 11 per cent that is still owned by Mercedes, but it’s not an important or significant number,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Ex-McLaren team principal, Ron Dennis holds a 15 per cent stake as does Mansour Ojjeh, a Saudi businessman, with another 30 per cent belonging to Bahrain company Mumtalakat.
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