Toto Wolff has been tipped to sell a stake in Mercedes – 10 years since he first acquired a stake in the Formula One team after initially being involved with Williams
Sky Sports Formula One pundit Craig Slater has questioned whether Toto Wolff should sell a stake in Mercedes given how much his asset has grown in recent years.
A record-breaking 24 races are scheduled for the 2024 season, reflecting the fact that interest in Formula One is arguably at an all-time high due to the success of Netflix’s Drive to Survive. There are rumors going around that there are additional interested parties trying to enter the picture.
As a result, investors who purchased shares in Formula One teams over the years have seen a significant increase in value; Wolff is one such investor. Slater, a pundit for Sky, claims that Wolff paid €50 million for his Mercedes share, but it is currently valued at more than €3 billion. Once an executive director, Wolff bought a thirty percent share in Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd in 2013.
“A couple of well-connected insiders have informed me that it’s possible that some Formula 1 ownership has considered whether the sport has peaked after noticing an increase in the value of their team.” Slater stated on the podcast for Sky Sports F1. Is now not the right time to sort of sell out?
“If you’re talking about Williams, who was sold for roughly £140 million and is currently valued at perhaps even a billion pounds, let alone dollars.
It’s intriguing that the Andretti family has made an attempt to enter, though perhaps they would be turned off by the cost of purchasing a team. Are they currently a competitive purchase for an F1 team? Why are the large sovereign wealth funds doing this? I assume that discussions are centered around the rumors that Aramco paid top dollar to purchase an Aston Martin from Lawrence Stroll.
“Yes, he paid off a lot of the creditors, but if you were Dorilton, Toto Wolff, or Lawrence Stroll, who purchased it through liquidation, you may have paid a few hundred million, or I believe Toto paid 50 million euros for his share, and now it’s worth three billion or whatever.
“It must be very tempting for some of these owners to maybe think about offloading it in the current climate, which is certainly benign compared to where it was a few years ago. Does that have its own incentive to sell, when in a few years you’ve made such a big gain?”
In the 2023 Constructors Championship, Mercedes came in second place, three points clear of third-place Ferrari. Mercedes, however, finished a massive 451 places behind leaders Red Bull.
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