F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone said that "the board of the sport’s parent company Delta Topco has voted to proceed with the Initial Public Offering," according to Christian Sylt of the London TELEGRAPH. Sylt also reported Ecclestone revealed a shake-up of F1’s $698.5M prize fund, "which will see the last-placed team lose the $10M it currently receives every year." Of the IPO, Ecclestone said, “we have agreed to do it. It will happen this year and it will be up and running. CVC is getting on with it and putting all the bits and pieces together that they have to.” On April 26, CVC formed a Jersey-based company CVC Delta Topco Nominee, "which is understood to be part of a reorganisation of the F1 company structure" to prepare for the flotation. F1’s prize fund is split between the top 10 teams. For the past three years any that finish outside this group received $10M each as part of an agreement Ecclestone made with former FIA President Max Mosley, who introduced three new teams in '10. The payment clause was part of the Concorde Agreement that expired at the end of last year. Ecclestone subsequently signed separate commercial agreements with each team, the exception being the 11th-place team Marussia. Ecclestone: “They don’t have a commercial agreement because they are not in the top 10. We pay the top 10, that’s what we do. For three years we did something different because we had an agreement with Max, but from now on we will pay the top 10 and that is it” (TELEGRAPH, 4/28).
