I found this post on another board, found it interesting: I may be wrong on this but as I understand, CVC took out a loan of $2.5 billion which was to be settled by 2014. They currently pay annual interest payments of around $200 million and about $300 million on the loan itself. So in total, they pay $500 million per year. F1's annual income is around $900 million, so you can see they are taking most of the money out to service the loan and the teams are getting under 50%. Now the important part in this is that F1's income should be relatively stable, even during the economic downturn due to television deals and race track deals, however, if Ferrari etc. were to leave CVC would be royally screwed as they will not even be able to afford interest payments. I don't feel like verifying the veracity of the numbers, but I've read that Bernie hasn't got any more beans to give to the teams, so this may very well be true. What a convoluted mess Bernie's got here. Layer in the grossly inept Max, and I druther think the big teams would do well to rid themselves of the current stinking carcass they are racing under.
He's ok, since he was the one who sold F1 to CVC. The loan has nothing to do with him. CVC on the other hand....
Bernie has a 10% stake in Formula One Group, CVC owns 70% and JP Morgan owns the remainder. Additionally, Bernie is president of Formula One Management, so I'd guess he has a pretty keen interest in not seeing F1 crater.
