Major doubts cast over Alpine’s ‘ridiculous’ £700m valuation

Former F1 team boss Eddie Jordan has stopped short of calling Alpine’s £700m valuation “fake news” and instead went with “it is preposterous, it’s ridiculous”.

Alpine broke the F1 internet on Monday when the Enstone team announced Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds had become a co-investor in the team along with fellow actor Michael B. Jordan as well as his Wrexham AFC co-owner Rob McElhenney.

三人组成三个投资集团的一部分,comprising of Maximum Effort Investments, Otro Capital and RedBird Capital Partners, that pumped £171m into Alpine Racing Ltd, equalling a 24% equity stake.

That, said the team’s statement, “values Alpine Racing Ltd around $900 million following this investment.” Or £706m.

Jordan, a Formula 1 team owner from 1991 until 2004, has cried foul of that as he feels the only teams worth that amount are Ferrari, Mercedes and probably Red Bull.

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Jordan told GB News: “I don’t believe it first of all.

“I won’t use the word fake news but there’s absolutely no way from an accounting point of view, just purely the financial model doesn’t stack up. That’s number one.

“I mean it’s all very nice and very sexy to put these figures on things but they need to be supported, and they need to be authorised.

“And I noticed that there hasn’t been any reaction from Alpine or indeed from Renault, which is the major shareholder, and I find that in itself kind of strange.

“To value something at that level at a gross value of £700m it is preposterous, it’s ridiculous.

“What does that then value people like a Ferrari or a Mercedes or a Red Bull for example?

“That is what I consider to be the value of those teams, and I regret but with Alpine it’s not even close to that yet.”

But although Jordan doesn’t believe Alpine is worth that amount, that may be what someone would offer to buy the team on the open market.

According to Formula 1 chief Stefano Domenicali, today teams are receiving offers in the “billions” to buy them out.

“Talking about the value of a team,” he told the Beyond the Grid podcast, “at the time, I would say two years ago, when the new Concorde Agreement has been signed, when there was the talk about ‘what is the value of a team that has to come in Formula 1’.

“There was a number put on the Concorde Agreement, that was [$]200 million, which seemed unreachable, because there were teams in the past that were sold by £1.

“Now, the market is offering almost billions to teams, and they are refusing that. Can you imagine that?”