Former FIA President Max Mosley said that he warned F1’s authorities "against taking a controversial stake in it which now threatens to put the brakes on the sale of the business," according to Christian Sylt for CITY A.M. American conglomerate Liberty Media last month agreed to buy F1’s parent company Delta Topco for £3.3B ($4.2B) from its controlling shareholder, private equity firm CVC, but it has since emerged that F1’s regulator, the FIA, stands to make nearly £33M ($42M) "from the deal" as it owns a 1% stake in Delta Topco. This has "fuelled concerns about a possible conflict of interest as the FIA’s consent is needed for the takeover to proceed." Mosley, who was president of the FIA from '93-09, said that the '13 purchase of the 1% stake is "arguably contrary to the deal that we did with the Commission back in 2001." He said, "I queried it at the time because it didn’t seem to me to be entirely in keeping with the arrangement we made with the EC, by then 12 years previously. But the FIA’s view was that it was 'de minimis' -- too small to matter -- and they said this will have no effect on governing motorsport. I was slightly surprised because the turnover of the FIA in those days was in the order of $50-60 million a year, which was the theoretical value of the one per cent, so it’s more or less like a year’s income and I didn’t see that as ‘de minimis'" (CITY A.M., 10/5).
