23/03/2012
NEWS STORY
Before jetting off for this weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix Formula One's boss Bernie Ecclestone had one important meeting to attend on Wednesday evening. It wasn't with a new sponsor or a new circuit which wants to join F1's calendar but instead was with music mogul Simon Cowell at London's swanky C Restaurant, which is owned by former Renault F1 team principal Flavio Briatore. In 2009 Cowell famously turned down a chance to meet US president Barack Obama saying that "he wanted to have dinner, but our diaries didn't quite match. He wanted to do eight, I wasn't free until nine. We just didn't quite connect." Ecclestone got no such rebuff and there is good reason for this.
On the face of it there may not seem to be much similarity between Ecclestone and Cowell. One is a grey-haired 81 year-old who is not renowned for being image conscious, and the other is a 52 year-old known for his clean cut looks and sparkling white teeth. However, in fact, Ecclestone and Cowell are cut from the same cloth and they sure had a lot to talk about.
Cowell is a racing fanatic who has even said he holds Ecclestone's method for developing F1 as a model for his own business. "I like the model of what Bernie Ecclestone has done," Cowell said in 2009 explaining that "the Singapore race is as good as the French race is as good as the English race."
F1 now appears to be returning the compliment as it came to light earlier this month that Lewis Hamilton's father Anthony is planning a television talent show, named 107% after the famous qualifying rule, to find the racing stars of the future. Just as with F1, at each stage of the show, the drivers will have to be within 107% of the winner or they will be kicked out of the competition. Hamilton said he is planning to launch 107% in the next two months and added that "the winner gets a full season's drive with an F1 team - a real race drive not a one- off test."
Hamilton is known to be a close associate of Ecclestone so it would make sense for him to see what Cowell thinks of the idea. The music boss has more than his fair share of connections to Hamilton as he knows his son Lewis' girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger through sitting with her on the judging panel of the US version of the X Factor show. He also happens to be a fierce rival of Simon Fuller, a music impresario who founded the XIX Entertainment agency which manages Lewis. Ecclestone recently described Lewis' decision to sign with XIX as "a disaster" which will undoubtedly have been music to Cowell's ears.
Likewise, Cowell and Ecclestone have yet more in common as they are both subjects of biographies written by Tom Bower, the author renowned in F1 circles for his staggering errors. As Pitpass reported, earlier this month Bower released a paperback version of his biography of Ecclestone and his next effort will be a book on Cowell. Ecclestone is perhaps best placed to give Cowell tips on how to handle Bower as although his books are renowned for revealing sensational business details about their subjects, almost all the coverage of the biography of F1's boss was focussed on his family life. In return, Cowell could provide something crucial to F1's future.
F1's majority owner, the private equity firm CVC, is understood to be planning a flotation of part of its stake in the sport with the location likely to be the Singapore stock exchange as Pitpass first revealed in November. Pulling this off will most probably involve appointing a number of new executives to F1's board in both executive and non-executive positions. Essentially, the executive positions are full-time hands-on roles whereas the non-executive roles tend to only involve attendance at board meetings a few times a month with the aim being to bring an outside view to the proceedings.
F1's parent company Delta Topco already has a number of executive directors. They include Ecclestone, its chief executive, Sacha Woodward-Hill, its chief legal officer and Duncan Llowarch, its chief financial officer. The non-executive directors are Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising firm WPP, and Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe.
To demonstrate that F1 has enough corporate governance it is likely that more directors will be appointed. This is what happened when the first attempts to float F1 were made in 1997 and Ecclestone was joined on the board by David Wilson, a former Ladbrokes senior financial executive who became finance director, Helmut Werner, the late head of Mercedes-Benz who became chairman, and Marco Piccinini, former sporting director of Ferrari, who became deputy chief executive.
Last year after F1's former chairman Gerhard Gribkowsky was jailed there was talk by Sky News' business editor Mark Kleinman of CVC appointing ex-Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose, or Lord Davies, the former trade minister, to replace him. Like many of Kleinman's predictions about F1 it came to nothing and Pitpass reported that in fact CVC co-founder Donald Mackenzie is F1's chairman.
One would imagine that if Ecclestone is involved with appointing more directors in preparation for a float he would want to hire people with the same kind of drive and entrepreneurialism that he has. This is where Cowell could come in as he clearly has a very corporate image whilst at the same time being a one-man-band like Ecclestone. The two tycoons certainly seem to get on.
With his contacts in the US and marketing savvy, Cowell could certainly help build up F1's profile in the US though the idea might well grate with F1 traditionalists. Indeed, the idea of Cowell joining forces with F1 was the subject of a Pitpass April Fool story last year but, as is often the case with F1, stranger things have happened.
What was completely serious in the April Fool piece was the comment from Ecclestone to Christian Sylt, Pitpass' business editor and publisher of F1's industry monitor Formula Money. Ecclestone said "we are in showbusiness. [Maybe that is the] wrong word to use, we are in the entertainment business. We are supposed to entertain." With his X Factor and Talent shows Cowell knows a thing or two about entertainment.
Ecclestone had come into contact with Cowell many times prior to their dinner on Wednesday. Sylt says "I have spoken to him several times about Cowell. I am sure he admires what he has achieved in the music industry as some parts of it revolve around him - much like F1 does around Ecclestone. He was keen to point out to me that Cowell has built up his empire relatively quickly compared to his decades of toil in F1."
We aren't saying that Cowell will be joining the board of F1 but that if Ecclestone has a hand in selecting new directors in preparation for a float then don't be surprised if he is in the running. It is worth stressing that there is virtually no chance that Cowell could take an executive role given the number of other jobs he is involved with. This is the main reason which would prevent him from being involved at all. The other is payment.
Ecclestone is F1's highest paid director and given his importance to the all the key commercial discussions in the sport this is perfectly understandable. However, he isn't in it for the money having cashed out around $3.9bn from F1 over the years. So although his salary is far from low, at £4.9m, it is lower than the amounts made by bosses of other blue chip businesses. Cowell is used to making more money than that and, according to the latest accounts for his company Syco Entertainment he made £27m in the 12 months to 31 March 2011 alone.
What could attract Cowell if he is asked to take a seat on the F1 board is the possibility of getting a stake in the sport. The two current non-executive directors own a 0.3% stake in F1, which is worth around £19m ($30m) at the $10bn value which F1 is expected to have.
It remains to be seen whether the float has Ecclestone's fingerprints on it and it is this which will affect how much influence he has over aspects such as the hiring of new directors. Ecclestone didn't get this far by ceding control and the early signs all point to the fact that he is very much in the driving seat. David Campbell, the managing director of F1's sponsorship and hospitality division Allsport was the only person mooted to replace Ecclestone and in a position to do so. However, he mysteriously left earlier this month leaving Ecclestone with a firmer grip on the wheel than ever before.