The Moscow Times
Monday, October 11, 2004. Page 5.
Russian-Born Canadian Bankrolls New F1 Team
Combined Reports
Reuters
Midland Group’s first foray into Formula One is expected to cost at
least $148 million.
TORONTO — Russia stepped closer to a starring role in Formula One
on Friday with the announcement of a new team to compete from 2006.
But while the cars will be built by Italian manufacturer Dallara,
frequent winners of the landmark Indy 500 in the United States,
the backers of Midland F1 are unfamiliar faces new to motorsport.
Few people in Formula One, with the exception of the sport’s commercial
supremo Bernie Ecclestone, have heard of Russian-born businessman
Alexander Shnaider.
His privately owned Midland Group is little-known even to ordinary
Russians.
A company statement said the chairman and co-founder was a naturalized
Canadian citizen, who moved to the West as a child after being born
in St. Petersburg.
The venture is likely to cost his company at least $100 million per
year, not including the $48 million bond that any new team has to
lodge with the sport’s governing body, but he accepted that.
“Of course the team will have a Russian flavor,” Shnaider said,
adding that he hopes to hire F1’s first Russian driver and help land
a Grand Prix for Russia.
“I do hope eventually there will be a Grand Prix in Russia. It’s a
large market with a growing middle class and a lot of international
companies are looking at it as a future market,” he said. “Russia
would get very positive exposure from staging a Formula One race and it
would be a pleasure for me to be instrumental in making that happen,”
he added.
Shnaider’s move will inevitably draw comparisons with Roman Abramovich,
the Russian billionaire who has ploughed more than $450 million into
soccer through his purchase of English Premier League club Chelsea.
Abramovich has, however, steered clear of a direct involvement in
Formula One, despite being a guest of Ecclestone at grands prix.
The sport, fueled by an incessant thirst for money, has been making
overtures to Russia since the post-Soviet era made overnight
billionaires of businessmen able to acquire state companies on
the cheap.
Midland is registered in Guernsey and headquartered in Toronto,
where the company recently joined forces with U.S. casino magnate
Donald Trump in building a luxury hotel and residential complex in
the business district.
There is little glamour to be found elsewhere in their business empire,
however. Midland’s extensive interests across Russia, the former Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe are mainly in old-fashioned heavy industries,
manufacturing, construction, agriculture and scrap metal dealing.
The group’s core business is iron and steel, but it bought Armenia’s
state electricity distributor in 2002 and also have a plant in Serbia
making seals for the automotive industry.
“Midland is prepared to fund the development of the team entirely,
but our unique position will help us attract sponsors,” Shnaider
said. “Basic survival in F1 requires an annual budget of $80 million
and we’re prepared for that.”
(Reuters, AP)