After initially denying that any such talks occurred last September, McLaren has done an about-face and admitted that it did have discussions with tech giant Apple over a possible partnership between the two brands. No less than McLaren chairman Mike Flewitt made the revelation to Reuters, saying that Apple “visited” and the two companies talked about what each other did in their respective line of work.
Unfortunately, the talks amounted to nothing, or as Flewitt said, “it never matured to a definitive proposition.”
What Flewitt meant by “definitive proposition” wasn’t made clear and could lead to a flurry of speculation surrounding the British automaker. McLaren is already in the headlines over the very public ousting of former chairman and company forefather Ron Dennis. The controversy rocking McLaren’s ownership status centers on the rift that developed between Dennis and fellow shareholders, namely Mansour Ojjeh and the Bahraini investment fund Mumtalakat. According to Reuters, the tipping point that led to the ouster of Dennis came when Ojjeh and Mumtalakat rejected a takeover bid from Chinese investors.
For his part, Flewitt didn’t dive into the details of the management dispute, although he did say that there have been a number of bids from several parties about purchasing the company, but Ojjeh and the Bahrainis were “committed to keeping the current shareholding in place.”
Based on Flewitt’s comments and Dennis’ own statement after his exit from McLaren, the former McLaren chairman appears to have at least been in favor of new investors joining the company and that Ojjeh and Mumtalakat were dead set against it, opting instead to retain ownership of the company. With Dennis now gone from McLaren, it’s unlikely that we’ll see Apple come into the picture with a takeover bid, although a partnership may still be in the cards.
Continue after the jump to read the full story.
from Top Speed http://ift.tt/2gCMaVL
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