Bahrain takes full control of car brand McLaren

Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund has taken full ownership of the McLaren Group, which builds high-end sportscars and owns a majority stake in the McLaren F1 team.

The Bahraini fund, Mumtalakat, was already McLaren’s biggest shareholder.

The deal follows a period of deep financial uncertainty for the British company, which has been making heavy losses.

McLaren hailed it as a “major milestone”.

The company is now understood to be looking at technical partnerships with other businesses, to help it develop electric vehicle technology.

“We are delighted at Mumtalakat’s continued commitment to McLaren through this deal,” McLaren Group’s executive chairman Paul Walsh said in a statement.

“This will further enable us to focus on delivering our long-term business plan, including investment in new products and technologies, while continuing to explore potential technical partnerships with industry partners.”

The McLaren Group has its headquarters in the Surrey town of Woking.

It owns McLaren Automotive, which over the past 14 years has become a major player in the market for prestige sportscars.

Its products compete with models from the likes of Ferrari and Porsche.

The group also has a majority stake in McLaren Racing, which owns the McLaren Formula 1 team, and also competes in the US IndyCar series, and the electric series Formula E and Extreme E.

The business has been under financial strain since the Covid pandemic, which initially forced it to suspend production of cars, and also led to the cancellation of racing activities around the world.

It underwent a major restructuring in 2020, which included the loss of more than 1,000 jobs.

It was then affected by the widespread disruption to supply chains that occurred as economies got back into gear following the pandemic, in particular a shortage of computer chips.

There were also problems with its new Artura hybrid sportscar, which caused it to suspend production, and led to delays in deliveries.

In the first nine months of last year – the most recent period for which figures are available – it made a pre-tax loss of £276m.

Mumtalakat has been an investor in McLaren Group since 2007, when it bought a 30% stake from founding shareholders Ron Dennis and Mansour Ojjeh.

Over time it increased that stake to 60%, while injecting hundreds of millions of pounds into the business.

Its decision to take full control, which was initially agreed last year, bolsters McLaren’s finances in the short term.

Also, sources within the group say that getting rid of what was seen as an overly complex shareholder structure will make future partnerships easier.

McLaren is known to be looking for new technical link-ups to help it expand its range and in particular work on developing electric vehicles.

The BBC understands the Swedish firm Polestar, owned by the Chinese group Geely, is among those to have held talks with McLaren.

According to the Financial Times, discussions have also been held with Hyundai, BMW and Californian electric brand Lucid Motors.

Any deal could involve Mumtalakat selling a minority stake in McLaren group to its chosen partner.