Ecclestone pockets 15 per cent pay rise while sport loses millions 11/09/2009 |
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Formula One motor racing boss Bernie Ecclestone pocketed a pay rise of nearly 15 per cent last year, despite the fact the sports series is haemorrhaging over £300 million a year.
Ecclestone, who is already a billionaire, now takes home a salary of £4 million for running the troubled sport, which has run into financial difficulties during the recession.
Publication of his huge wage will inevitably impact on the size of the divorce settlement he is currently hammering out with his estranged wife, Slavica, 51.
Legal experts had already predicted it would be the biggest ever seen, topping £1 billion.
The 6ft2in Croatian model was granted a quickie' divorce from 5ft4in Ecclestone, 78, earlier this year after 24 years of marriage on grounds of his “unreasonable behaviour”.
It took 58 seconds for the divorce to be agreed in March, but the payout from Ecclestone's £2.4 billion capital wealth is yet to be decided.
Before Ecclestone's salary was made public, legal experts thought Slavica could expect £1 billion of her former husbands estimated £2.4 billion fortune.
Formula One's owner, private equity firm CVC Capital, lost £300 million from F1 last year after it was forced to bolster prize pay-outs to ensure the cash-strapped racing teams do not follow through with threats to leave the sport.
The overall prize fund grew by over 50 per cent this year to around £310 million.
Pre-tax losses for F1's operator, Delta 3, also soared, from nearly £250 million in 2007 to over £320 million last year.
Honda announced it was quitting F1 in December because of the pressures of financing its team, sending F1 into financial crisis.
The remaining teams have signed an agreement with CVC and Ecclestone to stay competing until 2012.
CVC took on a huge debt of £1.5 billion to buy the series in 2006. It still has nearly £1.4 billion to pay back by 2014.
Ecclestone's salary makes up the bulk of the £4.9 million paid to directors of Formula One Management.
Mrs Ecclestone, who now lives at Chelsea Harbour, west London, petitioned for divorce last November saying her husband's behaviour had caused her “stress and anxiety”.
Friends of the couple say his workaholic lifestyle led to the split.
They met when Slavica was modelling at the 1982 Italian Grand Prix and married at Kensington and Chelsea Register Office in July 1985. They have two daughters, Tamara, 24, and Petra, 19.
Mr Ecclestone's wealth has placed him at the top of the Sunday Times Rich List for many years.
As well as property in Chelsea, he has become a part-owner of Queen's Park Rangers football club with friend and fellow Formula 1 boss Flavio Briatore.
In 2004 he sold a home in Kensington Palace Gardens for a then record sum of £57.1 million, despite never having lived in it.
(Source: thisislondon.co.uk)
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