August 22, 2002. Copyright, 2002, Graphic News. All rights reserved

What drives Bernie Ecclestone?
By Elisabeth Ribbans

LONDON, August 22, Graphic News:  The iconoclastic Bernie Ecclestone has no respect for age. Now approaching his 72nd birthday (October 28), the billionaire Formula 1 powerbroker shows no signs of slowing up. Still firmly in charge of the worldÕs most glamorous sport, a private jet keeps him on the same hectic schedule that has always been his tonic Ð holidays, he says, bore him to distraction. He may even be ready to deploy his energy and influence beyond motor racing. According to reports, he has told friends that heÕd be prepared to lead a London bid for the Olympic Games.

Despite undergoing heart surgery in 1999, indications of mortality donÕt seem to register on the Ecclestone dashboard. This, after all, is the man who barely a year after receiving a coronary artery bypass negotiated the commercial rights to F1 racing for the next 100 years. The deal Ð which cost Ecclestone $360m Ð gives his trading company, Formula One Management, sole rights to the fees that promoters pay to stage Grand Prix events, and sole authority to sell worldwide television rights to the racing calendarÕs 17 races.

The son of a Suffolk trawler captain, Bernard Charles Ecclestone left school at 16 for a job at the local gasworks. Within a few years, the motorcycle spare parts business heÕd set up in his lunch hours had grown Ð via a partnership with Fred Compton Ð into one of BritainÕs biggest motorcycle dealerships. After a brief spell racing Formula 3 series cars ended in an accident at Brands Hatch in 1949, Ecclestone returned to business, adding auctions, car financing and property interests to his portfolio.

In 1957, he entered the world of F1, as manager of Welsh racing driver Stuart Lewis-Evans and new owner of the Connaught team. It proved a short first foray: Ecclestone quit after Lewis-Evans died from injuries suffered at the Moroccan GP the following year.

A tragic symmetry would also blight his second period of involvement in the sport: in 1970, his close friend and business partner, AustriaÕs legendary driver Jochen Rindt, was killed at Monza. Ecclestone took a two-year break.

His downtime ended with the purchase of the Brabham team. Frustrated by the sportÕs poor organisation Ð or scenting opportunity in its amateurism Ð he spearheaded, with Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Max Mosley, Ken Tyrrell and Frank Williams, the formation of the F1 Constructors Association (FOCA), becoming its chief executive four years later.

It was the start of a rise to giant status for the diminutive Ecclestone. The highly secret Concorde Agreement, struck with motor sportÕs ruling body, the FIA, in 1981 gave FOCA rights to negotiate TV contracts. At first these rights belonged to the teams but FOCA members later allowed EcclestoneÕs then trading company, Formula One Promotions and Administration (FOPA), to manage the rights on their behalf. TV revenues were split 47 percent to the F1 teams; 30 percent to the FIA; and 23 percent to FOPA. PromotersÕ fees were also kept by FOPA. In 1999, Ecclestone sold an eighth of his business to Morgan Grenfell Private Equity for $325m. A year later, San Francisco investment company Hellman & Friedman took another 37.5 percent for $725.5m. The Ecclestone family retain control over half of a very lucrative company.

But money, says Ecclestone, is not the motivator. In a recent interview, he claimed he was driven only by the will to succeed. Money was a happy by-product.

He claims also to be unimpressed by pretension and swagger, preferring the company of quiet achievers. The private jet, he says, is necessary to fulfil the commitments in his business diary, but he and his wife Slavica Ð a Croatian former model Ð employ no driver. Ecclestone chauffeurs their teenage daughters to school himself.

With the exception of his art collection, his recreational tastes veer away from the highbrow. HeÕd rather watch a light movie that endure a night at the opera.

Associates find the softly spoken Ecclestone genial in company, but like the Scorpion sign under which he was born, he has a formidable sting when crossed. Grown men recoil from its venom. The latest victim was Rob Bain, who quit his post as boss of the British Grand Prix after EcclestoneÕs vehement attack on the organisation of this seasonÕs event at Silverstone.

Ecclestone himself seems to shrink at nothing. He has weathered tax probes, a political storm involving his £1 million donation to the British Labour Party and, most recently, the liquidation of the Kirsch media group that has a 75 percent stake in SLEC, the holding company of EcclestoneÕs F1 interests.

But a challenge to his omnipotence may yet be round the corner. F1Õs European car manufacturers are discussing plans for a new championship from 2008 Ð one that claims to offer car companies a better deal than the one they get from Ecclestone. The question is whether they can succeed to wither Bernie, where age has failed. 
/ENDS