McLaren may be a British company, but its owners come from all around the world. Now it has a new shareholder, and he comes from Canada.
The group announced that it sold shares in the company to one Michael Latifi, the Torontobased head of Sofina Foods. Though the company didn’t disclose in the statement just how big a stake in the McLaren Group Latifi has taken, the report says that his shares amount to 10 percent, for which he reportedly paid £203.8 million. That’s about $275m in equivalent US dollars, or $350m in Latifi’s Canadian dollars.
The stake places Latifi as the third-largest shareholder in the group, which includes the F1 team, supercar manufacturer, and applied technologies division. The Bahraini royal family’s Mumtalakat investment arm remains the majority shareholder at 56 percent. Mansour Ojjeh‘s TAG Group holds another 14 percent. The rest is divided up between four other minority stakeholders.
In addition to his own holdings, Latifi’s son Nicholas is an aspiring (if as-yet unaccomplished) racing driver. He currently competes in Formula 2 (where he won a single race last year) and serves as a test driver for the Force India team. His father’s investment in McLaren could only help in his career.
What do we have in our June-July issue?
Cover Story has been divided between both the most powerful Ranger Rover Sport SVR yet and the Infiniti QX30, Q30’s bigger sibling.
In our Global Drive section, we drove the first silent Range Rover ever, the P400e PHEV. Our Editors’ Choice is pretty busy and crowded in this issue as we bring you some of the nicest test drives from Dubai. We drove the Kia Stinger GT, Mazda CX-5 and Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.
From Beirut we drove the Infiniti QX70, GMC Terrain and Chevrolet Equinox.
Our Special Feature this issue was chosen pretty carefully and surely in demand the past couple of months. We published some nice photos about the classic Range Rover on our Facebook page and it seems it caught your attention. Here we are testing the JIA Range Rover Chieftain!
Least but not last I would like to wish you all Fitr Mubarak and Happy Eid!
Issam Eid