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McLaren Buys Back the Majority of Shares Owned by Mercedes

Four months after they've announced they'll part ways with Mercedes Benz in Formula One, McLaren Automotive seems to have already purchased back a big stake in the Woking organization back. According to F1 team principal Martin Whitmarsh, it seems that the German carmaker now owns only 11 percent of the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 Team.

Before November 2009, when McLaren were Mercedes' works team inside the series, the Germans used to control 40 percent of the outfit. When deciding to switch factory support towards Brackley (Brawn GP), the Stuttgart based manufacturer made it very clear that they would progressively sell their stake in the team back to the Brits through the next couple of years.

However, not half of year has passed and Whitmarsh revealed the majority of that was already purchased by McLaren. Nevertheless, we don't know if the company's CEO Ron Dennis was the one that paid the money, as it is reported he still owns only 15 percent of McLaren Automotive, same as his Saudi business partner Mansour Ojjeh.

Additionally, Bahrain's state holding company Mumtalakat used to control the other remaining 30 percent stake in the team.

I think it is about 11 percent that is still owned by Mercedes, but it's not an important or significant number,” said Whitmarsh to Reuters news agency during the launch of McLaren's road car division, failing to provide the media with more information on how the financial transaction was made or who got the 29 percent stake previously owned by Merc.

Also, he hinted that it won't be long before the McLaren Automotive business will begin to sustain their F1 operations financially.
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