Hmmm, either people at BrawnGP (Fry) are incredibly naive, beyond naive actually, or this was/is an inside/deliberate job.
In times like these you just don't sign sponsorship for 90 mio without even once talking to the CEO, either personal or over a videophone.

I do like Henkel products, and after Solingen they are my second favourite company to shop for home hardware, but I think in here (without actually knowing too many facts) they will probably swim against difficult river current. Saying NO is probably a faint move to negotiate lesser agreement (settlement).

No one as far as I have read mentioned anything about Brawn been pursued for money. This is about the statement that Henkel aren't suing Brawn.

well, honda didnt have any serious sponsorship, place for virgin was sold cheap. Its fry responsible and im not that surprised he failed again.

I had read this in a poor Google translation.
The Autosport article is much clearer.

Maybe but I don't think so because if that were to be the case, they would have negotiated a settlement without all these publicity.
I strongly believe they are serious and going public indicates to me that they have very strong moral and legal grounds for doing so.

There is one and only one loser in all these press coverage - Mercedes.

This is close to fraud based on identity theft.

What's going on here...
Is Fry the new Max, that everyone loves to hate?

If I were Mercedes, Mr. Fry will be fried - He will be the scapegoat.

Isn't he a shareholder of the team?

Fry is the most underrated man in the background of F1. Maybe because the setback of BAR started in 2005 when he replaced Dave Richards, or I don't know. Don't forget, Fry brought Ross Brawn, John Owen, Jörg Zander, Loic Bigois to the team. Without them Honda/BrawnGP would have been an average team an not a champion team.
It was obvious that BrawnGP had their budget for the 2009 season, so they were not in hurry to secure the sponsor deals in that season. Despite this Henkel-case, I think there are other sponsors on the board. We don't know how they were negoating, we don't know several details.

He doesn't have to be a company executive especially if mercedes don't want it.

You're right about it, but how would be the repercussion of that within the team?

Nick Fry is gonna smile a bit less (finally)... it wasn't difficult to verify and realize that the guy they were dealing with was literally a fraud..

See? That's interesting. You tell Mercedes you have nice sponsorship for the next three years, they buy your team which you bought for 50 cents and get rich during the process.

You make is sound as if Mercedes have been taken for a ride - deliberately. Guess what, you may well be right.

OK, my conspiracy theory is that Henkel signed the deal with Michael as the driver, while in the mea tim Michael bailed out, like yesterday. So Fry leak the story to press with the aim to consolidate the deal, even so Henkel has sufficient fund to avoid paying sponsorship...

Daimler was fully aware of this case, Henkel warned them in October.

The stockholders of Daimler won't be happy about Mercedes buying a team that they thought had 90 million euros of sponsorship that now don't exist.

Martin and Ron are laughing there asses now.

Which person do you mean by 'Mercedes' ? lol... but I agree that might well be what happened.

The bedroom F1 website goes into more details: http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_new...es_art_id=39678

It looks like someone at Brawn GP (Fry) was dealing with some former Henkel employee, and convicted fraudster, named Willy Luchs.

It don't look very professional this... horrible negligence at the very best.. might be like buying a house with some major hidden defect, if you're Mercedes buying Brawn GP..

Amazing, Nick Fry had the nerve to threaten Henkel with legal action - lol
I agree with you that Mercedes didn't do their home work properly. Not every mercedes board member was happy with the purchase of Brawn GP. I bet the mercedes board was informed about the Henkel "deal" as one of the reasons why leaving Mclaren and buying into Brawn for a "song" was a brilliant idea. Now they are going to have to go back and say "sorry, we were had"!

Well, well, well ...

Merry Xmas and a happy new year!

Can somebody translate this news?
http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-...-1-1562884.html

Willy Luchs was not the Henkel employee, it was Kai von Bargen (now ex-Head of Corporate Affairs & Sponsoring at Henkel). The Will Luchs guy was Kai's accomplice in the shady business dealings.

IMO that was the rumored missing scandal that never materialized before the end of the season.. If those facts are true, surely Fry is a goner?

This is not pocket change we're talking about.. that Fry's still there after the Mercedes buyout is a mystery to me lol

Ah, good.. thanx for the correction.. the point is Brawn GP was still dealing this mega Henkel sponsorship deal with some Dutch letterbox company, instead of Henkel itself, lol

To do that you are either:

A) an incredible lousy businessman

B) or have a hidden agenda.

I have no other explanation for it.

And Henkel has sought a declaration in the German court, which means that no proceedings can be brought elsewhere until the German court has dealt with jurisdiction issues. If the contract was signed under English law with English jurisdiction, the English court can do nothing about it.

The funny thing is that F1 teams are absolutely crap at due diligence. Look how many fraudulent sponsorship deals have been done in the past. And drivers given drives on the basis of sponsorship that does not materialize.

The duo pulled a similar stunt on a german bank and Henkel recently. Currently under police investigation:
Kai von Bargen and ex-con man Willy Luchs (55) have cheated a Hamburg bank for 20 million euros. They appeared to have used stationery from chemical giants Henkel with forged signatures of Rorsted, one of the Henkel's directors.

I believe the letterbox company was that of the so called sponsorship agency (Willy Luchs) that 'brought them in contact' with Henkel (Kai von Bargen).
I read that Brawn representatives had even visted the the Henkel headquarters in germany (invited by Kai von Bargen), which made it all look real I guess. But surely, they did not meet any of company's board members.

So are Mercedes trying to find out what level of authorization Kai von Bergen had? Why do you think are they pursuing this?

Yup.. Super Aguri was a poignant case of late: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_United_Gro...mp;_Gas_Company

Kicking Fry out as a starter.

I think you've said all that needs to be said sir

Even the Pitpass dude thought of googling Willy Luchs though... no guided tour of the Henkel headquarters should stand in the way of that..

The funny thing is Fry saying: 'We've signed some nice contracts' and then threatening Henkel with legal actions... all based on this near-obvious nonsense..

He was better with the 'Earth dreams' type of sponsorship.. much safer as well!

It would go something like this. Brawn would be saying "hey, where's our money? Unless you pay in a week we'll sue you." Henkel, thinking it is not liable, issue legal proceedings in Germany to seek a declaration that it has not contracted with Brawn. They would do this on the quiet and get the German court "seised" of the action, which means under European law Brawn have to deal with the German proceedings first before suing. The German court might decline to hear the case, on the basis it's an English thing, or it may make the declaration - or state that Henkel IS liable to Brawn. Point is, it will be dealt with by German judges and German jurisprudence.

So Mercedes will be dragged into it as part of the takeover. Having bought Brawn, they have bought all Brawn contracts, and probably claims by/against Brawn. This would be one of them.

And Mercedes will be on home territory as much as Henkel, so a case that might ordinarily have been seen as more English - putative contract probably had English law clauses in there, and Henkel would seek home advantage in a claim to disadvantage Brawn - might now be fought out in full in Germany with both sides' blessing.

Earth dreams was a Honda marketing campaign.

The things is, this team has zero experience when it comes to big 3rd party sponsors, as they never had one.

BAT and later Honda, were both owners and main sponsors.

Wasn't that the brainchild of Simon Fuller?

What will the lose of £80m do to Brawn? This years car is already developed and they now have the backing of Mercedes.

Yep. He was able to sell Honda the idea.

Yeah that was just a lame joke..

That excuse won't get them very far though..

What's the situation?

- Luckily for the team, new owners Mercedes are rich, but certainly they don't need that sort of crap.

- Nick Fry is responsible for that sort of crap.

You work out what comes next lol..

Saved him from doing any actual work.

They may be rich but some of them already didn't like the idea of buying a whole team while others where closing shop. Imagine how they feel now that they learn they have a 90 million euro hole in their new team.

Fry's incompetence never ceases to amaze.

And the cherry on the top today is Dr.T:
http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/news/20...t_09121416.html


I mean, what the hell is wrong with these people?

guys with money is not nice to the team owner any more...



or the guys are not god enough besides being 1) good engineer 2) jaguar spokesman.

Nick got nicked...again!

They are easily suckered by conmen.

I don't think it will really hurt them, since Mercedes shouldbe able to cover the losses for a while. And Henkel wouldn't be the only sponsor they had lined up.

"Points" Nick Fry, your fired!
or
Nick, your fried!

So you think Nick Fry's blackmail strategy has chance actually to gain 90 mil Euro from Henkel?