Lotus boss sacked

Dany Bahar, the CEO of Group Lotus, has been suspended by the new owners of the parent company, DRB-Hicom.

Bahar was deeply involved in the controversy concerning the two Lotus teams, beginning in 2010, when Lotus Racing was racing in F1. That team later became Caterham, but Group Lotus had a deal with Tony Fernandes, the team principal of Caterham, to use the Lotus branding. Fernandes wanted to use the Team Lotus name and logo for 2011, but Proton, the previous owners of Group Lotus, said no. A court case decided that Fernandes could use the Team Lotus roundel and the name, but not ‘Lotus’ on its own. Read more on that here.

Today the announcement came, that Dany Bahar has been suspended from his post,  “while an investigation is carried out into a complaint about his conduct.”

A statement from Group Lotus read:

“As a result of a number of media inquiries, Group Lotus plc (“Lotus”) can today confirm that, following an operational review, chief executive Dany Bahar has been temporarily suspended from his role to facilitate an investigation into a complaint about his conduct made by Lotus’ penultimate parent company, DRB-HICOM Berhad.”

“The penultimate holding company would like to stress it is business as usual at Lotus. We fully support the company and will continue to support Lotus in its business endeavours and development.”

CONFIDENTIAL: Leaked documents from Lotus

As previously written on this blog, the Lotus F1 Team sponsorship deal with Group Lotus has been terminated and Proton, the owner of GL, has stepped in to loan the team £30m. The guarantee is, that if this loan is not repaid within five years, Proton takes over everything.

Leaked documents, which I will show in their entirety here, show exactly how the loan is made up, and how it must be repaid. It also offers details on every single piece of equipment the team has, this also includes all machinery, all show cars, the plant itself, the land surrounding it, work-in-progress, down to every single bolt and nut being manufactured as you read this.

As if this is not juicy enough for the hard core F1 fan, a fifth document reveals the property valuation as of October 2010, the payments for the simulator, the cost and value of the show cars, and also gives detailed descriptions on every single piece of equipment, the team uses, down to measuring machines, electro microscopes, milling machines, autoclaves, test rigs and much more.

Below are the five four pages relating to the loan itself, and the fifth is the detailed description.

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Page 5 Remember to rotate the document, when you read it.

Group Lotus responds to rumours

As I said a few days ago, the Lotus F1 team is no longer sponsored by the car company by the same name. However, Proton, the owners of Group Lotus, has issued a loan of £30m, under the condition that the team itself has been put up as collateral. If the loan is not repaid in time, Proton will take over the team.

A statement reads:

“Lotus F1 Team and Group Lotus have reshaped their commercial relationship earlier this year. The new governance agreement signifies the continued commitment of Group Lotus to the team and the sport.

“Group Lotus’s branding and marketing rights and subsequent activities remain unaffected by the new agreement until at least 2017. Alongside continued branding and title partnership status, Group Lotus is also the exclusive master licensee for all Lotus F1 Team merchandise.

“The new agreement was reached following Group Lotus owners Proton providing team owners Genii with a £30m loan which is repayable within three years. In order to secure the loan, Genii used 100 percent of the F1 team’s assets as collateral, meaning that under the conditions of the loan agreement Proton have been given full title guarantee to all plant, machinery, show cars, computers, office and the Lotus F1 Team headquarters.

“In addition, Proton retains the rights to purchase 10 percent of the F1 team. Another 10 percent share option will be activated if the team default on their loan obligations with Proton.”

At the same time, you could read a longer and rather bizarre statement from the team itself, dishing out un-disguised content for several people, including Tony Fernandes, Joe Saward and others. The statement is here in its entirety:

Take a little look at what we found online. Don’t you think it’s funny? We do. We had a good old giggle. After all, we love a bit of self irony, just as well really. Although it’s funny, this one’s not accurate but then again, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? The inconvenient truth is–surprise, surprise–we have never said that there are no problems at Lotus.

So whilst lots of people obviously feel the need to comment on Lotus’ current situation in the absence of proper facts or evidence, we can’t ignore these particular mistruths any longer even if we would like to, so we have decided to turn a negative into a positive and use this hilarious piece of ‘art’ to set the record straight regarding the status quo at Group Lotus and try to return a little stability to a fast changing situation.

False rumour #1: Dany Bahar is no longer CEO of Group Lotus.

Fact: Rubbish – Dany Bahar still is.

False rumour #2: Dato’ Sri Syed is no longer Managing Director of Proton.

Fact: Again rubbish. He still is.

You can thank good old Tony Fernandes for these two. Don’t take everything he tweets too seriously—perhaps he’s still frustrated about owning Caterham instead of Lotus and the fact that he fights HRT and Marussia instead of Mercedes and Ferrari in F1.

And whilst we’re on the subject of jokes—do you know the latest F1 joke? Mike Gascoyne, Caterham Group’s Chief Technical Officer, has gone missing. Why? He’s looking for the 30 to 40 points he predicted for the last F1 season. Funny.

Speaking of F1: It seems that one special so called ‘independent’ source is at the root of the lion’s share of damaging rumours and misleading stories. The delightful Joe Saward which leads us nicely to…

False rumour #3: Joe Saward is JUST an independent journalist.

Fact: He is an active Director for the Caterham Group.

And unlike some, we don’t want to get too personal, so we’ll leave it to you to judge how ‘independent’ his stories about Lotus are.

False rumour #4: Group Lotus is no longer involved in F1.

Fact: Lotus F1 Team and Group Lotus have reshaped their commercial relationship earlier this year. The new governance agreement signifies the continued commitment of Group Lotus to the team and the sport.

Group Lotus’ branding and marketing rights and subsequent activities remain unaffected by the new agreement until at least 2017. Alongside continued branding and title partnership status, Group Lotus is also the exclusive master licensee for all Lotus F1 Team merchandise.

The new agreement was reached following Group Lotus owners Proton providing team owners Genii with a £30m loan which is repayable within three years. In order to secure the loan Genii used 100% of the F1 team’s assets as collateral meaning that under the conditions of the loan agreement Proton have been given full title guarantee to all plant, machinery, show cars, computers, office and the Lotus F1 Team headquarters.

In addition Proton retains the rights to purchase 10% of the F1 team. Another 10% share option will be activated if the team default on their loan obligations with Proton.

Again we leave it to your judgement how ‘bad’ Lotus’ current situation in F1 is. And speaking of bad situations…

False rumour #5: Group Lotus is going into administration.

Fact: Rubbish. The takeover of our parent company Proton by DRB-HICOM couldn’t have come at a worse time, but up until that point Proton was (and still remains) fully committed to our five year business plan to create jobs and to expand the factory and business. With the takeover process the funding has been restricted and DRB-HICOM is taking time to understand what to do with the business. DRB-HICOM is currently in the middle of due diligence of Group Lotus and there have been and continue to be positive discussions between Group Lotus senior management and senior management at DRB-HICOM both here in Hethel and in Malaysia. At no point has DRB-HICOM indicated to Group Lotus that it intends to put the company into administration. The over-active rumour mill is seriously damaging our business reputation, image and credibility but it is what it is.

The simple fact is, and we haven’t denied this—Lotus is going through a very difficult phase at the moment but we are showing true fighting spirit every day in trying to keep this vision alive. This is also a fact—no matter what people outside of Lotus may say or tweet or blog.”