India's "embattled" Sahara conglomerate said that it wants to sell its 42.5% stake in the Force India Formula 1 team to help release Founder Subrata Roy from jail, "but some motor racing insiders" are skeptical about "how easy it will be to find a buyer," according to Baldwin & Chatterjee of REUTERS. Sahara, which paid $100M for the shareholding in '11, sought the Indian Supreme Court's permission this month to "dispose of Force India and other assets" to raise a combined $778.38M. However, former Jordan, Jaguar and Red Bull marketing exec Mark Gallagher said that such a sale "would not be easy." Gallagher: "I don’t think anybody will pay 100 million pounds, euros or dollars for 42.5 percent of a mid-level F1 franchise." Others said that it would be easier to dispose of the stake "if the whole team" -- run by beer baron Vijay Mallya, who also owns 42.5% -- were up for sale because a buyer "would want outright control." With F1 "far less popular than cricket in India," and Mallya under pressure from lenders to meet loan repayment obligations linked to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines, "the stake on its own could be a hard sell." Caterham administrator Finbarr O'Connell said, "Unless you are just doing it for sponsorship, I imagine you would want control. And generally sponsors don’t want to be shareholders." A Sahara spokesperson said in a statement that there were "no talks with anybody at the moment" about selling the F1 team stake. F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone said that he was "quite sure the last thing Vijay wants to do is to quit." That said, he added, "every team has its price." Ecclestone: "There's a lot of teams that if somebody comes along with the right check, they would sell." Mallya's Force India holding "forms part of a package held as collateral by British-based drinks giant Diageo" to underpin a $135M loan to Watson Ltd., one of his affiliated companies, Diageo said in an earnings press release last month (REUTERS, 2/16).
