Why then one wonders is there an association between the "contract" and the bank loan?

I'd say somebody exceeded his authority just a little.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85f90b2e-e90f-11...144feab49a.html

My understanding is that the Henkel employee and Fuchs arranged a number of dodgy contracts, of which the Brawn contract was one. In order to pay for some of those contracts, a dodgy bank loan was arranged by the employee using company stationary and a forged CEO signature. The bank loan was not used to pay anything under the Brawn contract as no early payment was due.

The Henkel statement (on Pitpass) describes the "contract" as being signed by Brawn and the former employee. So the question is whether Brawn were entitled to assume he had authority to sign (and it is therefore Henkel's risk if he exceeded his authority) or if Brawn had to investigate his authority (and it is their risk if he exceeded it). If it was the UK and the person in question was a director, the company would be bound no matter if the director was off on a frolic of their own acting outside their authority. What the position is here given it's: (a) Germany; and (b) the "Head of Corporate Affairs and Sponsorship", I don't know. But I don't think it is open and shut either way.

EDIT: thanks for the link barnardferrari. From that article it sounds like the employee signed the guarantee himself, but presented to Brawn an authorisation to do so from the CEO that was a forgery.

With the sum of money we are talking about, the alarm bells should have been ringing real hard at Brawn GP, after a simple check on Luchs, IMO...

They didn't check who the hell was Luchs (turns out he already was known to be a fraudster), went ahead into an agreement with the fraudster and the (ex-)Henkel guy, and finally, even after Henkel kindly pointed out the contract was worthless, Brawn GP still insisted Henkel was supposed to be their sponsor..

The starting point is Luchs, and it should have stopped there too... for Brawn GP/Mercedes to side with that guy and insist the deal is legitimate is stupid.. IMHO of course..

But what were the possible benefits for the fraudsters?

Joe Saward says : "The result of this was an investigation that revealed that the head of sponsorship and two accomplices were allegedly creating fake paperwork using Henkel stationery to get loans valued at $65m. They intended to use this money to pay for the sponsorship, but around $16m of that money is reported to be missing. "

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/...rt-mercedes-gp/

Maybe the guys are on the run?

Money for commissioning the deal I'd think.

But that can´t be true. If they intended to ´use this money to pay for the sponsorship´ Henkel would be very surprised to see their name on the livery
Besides authorization to get a bank loan of that amount is impossible without checks by the bank and they would go through their normal financial contacts. A rogue employee with forged papery can´t get a loan.

Well the point obviously wasn't for the fraudster to make Henkel fulfill the entirety of the agreement... looks like the point was to do their thing with the commission, as Timstr11 points out, and the first payment(s) as well..

Apparently, Brawn GP was asking for money already on November 13, so I guess significant harm could be done long before Henkel was supposed to be a decal on the car..

Joe Saward doesn't know what he's talking about.

From the german press I gleaned the following:

-Mr L. approaches Brawn in May 2009 (Monaco) as a sponsorship agent.
This agent supposedly acts as intermediary for companies regarding sponsorship. L. proposes a sponsorship deal with Henkel.

-Brawn contacts Henkel headquarters in Dusseldorf directly (gets in contact with Kai von B.)

-Invited by Kai, Brawn even visits the headquarters in Dusseldorf on 15 June.

-Eventually a deal is done (31 July).


So I believe the only money that has exchanged hands is Brawn paying this Mr L. a handsome fee, with surely Mr Kai. von B. getting a nice cut.

The company didn't have the opportunity to inform Brawn that the CEO has to sign off the deal since this was between a rouge employee and Brawn. In any case one of the signatures required to seal the contract was a forgery, certainly even under english law, this should render that contract invalid.

Another point, if what you wrote about english law and contracts is correct, this would make english companies easy pickings for rouge employees and fraudsters and for this reason, I doubt the english law would be that weak.

more news

Thanks for the link femi.

My guess on a possible compromise deal: "look, your employee was fraudulent and that's your responsibility as you employed him. We are only currently out €X that we paid to Luchs as his comission. If you cover that amount, we'll call it quits on the sponsorship deal and not hold you to it".


I think you are only looking at this from the angle of the company that employs the fraudster. There are always two victims - the company that employs and the company that the fraudster does the dodgy deal with. English law protects the latter more than the former, as the former is responsible for who they employ.

Mercedes knew this was going on, they are seeking out of court settlement.

Brawn (or his partner) visitied the Henkel and perhaps paid fee for the arrangement to the fraudent.

The contract is widely recognised as fault.



Meaning that...

We do not know if it was Fry or Brawn who signed the deal, which cold mean, Mercedes trying to cover up the neck of Ross, who was after all responsible for all the affair.

I understood that and it still doesn't change my opinion about the weakness of the law. The law should incorporate a set of procedures that both companies should adhered to with the aim of protecting both. Right now, it seems the company that employs the fraudster is not protected.

In the Henkel case, the signature of the company CEO was forged by an employee. I don't see why Henkel should suffer any penalty whatsoever.

I'm not doubting a fraud of some sort has taken place. I'm only questioning the assumption by some people, of the need for some verification before accepting the word of "Head of Corporate Affairs & Sponsoring" If Brawn signed this contract with a lowly office junior, a with a lovely blonde P.A after a nice session in the toilets, then I could except the argument of negligence on the side of Brawn. But the "Head of Corporate Affairs & Sponsoring", from a blue-chip company? Applying this logic in every day life, you will be held liable if you decide to pay a cheque into a bank, the money goes missing and you lose all your money because the CEO never took the cheque personally. No large multi-national is micro managed anymore. Why the hell would BrawnGP need to verify the deal with the CEO, when they employ a highly paid "Head of Corporate Affairs & Sponsoring" I can't stand Nick Fry and would take any chance to bash him over the head. But on this occasion he must be absolved of blame.

Interesting article for the tech oriented about operations at the Brackley team: http://www.pesmag.co.uk/features/52/200911/126/

The article ends with a promising quote:

I think Merc could be best / 2nd best team in 2010, given that they started to develop the new car at the beginning of summer
Mclaren (and i guess ferrari) is taking an aggressive approach with the new car, since the '09 models were basicly crap

Great find as usual Timstr11

The part that grabbed my attention is:

'We are also starting to produce models with active suspension, so we can simulate aspects such as tyre squash as well.'

I remember a quote from Ross in his Ferrari days highlighting the importants of knowing how tyres/suspension have a massive effect on the bodywork aero.

I read a post in the last few days that mentioned something about Button doubting the performance of the Merc and was another part reason for the switch. I can't find it now, anyone know where it is?

Its not important, but its bugging me now cause I'm sure I read it..........

I found this part of the article about the FOTA resource restrictions very interesting:
“FOTA has a legally binding agreement amongst its members regarding resource restriction with a view to reduce cost, restrict spend on capital equipment, how many people we can employ, and how much money to spend externally on car parts” expands Mr Miller. This thus presents an opportunity for the teams that can make the most of their resources and shifts the focus to getting the most out of their equipment.

He continues: “We’ve already got excellent facilities and investment so it’s really a matter of using it to best effect. With the downsizing that we had to go through, we’re now down to 450 people and to comply with the 2010 regulations, that’s about the right size, but there’s still a trade off. If you have 350 people in chassis development, you can have an external expenditure of €40 million, but the more people you have the less you can spend, with an equivalency ratio of one head to €100,000. We believe we have an advantage over the other teams because we’ve already been through the pain of downsizing and reorganising.”

Well those excellent facilities and work force didn't produce much progress during the second half of last season.

because they already switched to 2010

True...,If you keep ignoring the fact that they switched off 2009 development in May.

Not sure the green and silver go well together.

I think it should be ok, the interesting thing will be how Exxon will look at this ...

1) It's not green - it's yellow
2) That doesn't even resemble reality. It's a mock-up based on a BGP-001.

I reckon they will still use Mobil lubricants specially designed for the Merc engine.
It's been reported that Exxon has to stay put with McLaren due to the split agreement between McLaren and Mercedes.

1) You're colour blind (no offense)
2) Thanks again for stating the obvious. You seem to make a habit of that.

Better get a new monitor or your eyes checked out ...

I was thinking the same thing, does this mean their partnership has come to an end?

I think he meant blue, lol. That colour there in the pic is somewhere between light blue and light green. Seems to go alright with the Merc silver IMO.

Actually, I am colour-blind. But that doesn't mean my ears are useless - back when Brawn GP was formed, Ross Brawn said that when it came to choosing colours, they went in for white, black and yellow.

It's called Turquoise.

And this is relevant to the pic posted above how?

Side view rendering

They seem to have signed Syntium as well. Wasn't that a BMW sponsor as well?

EDIT: Syntium is a Petronas brand.

Okay, looking at your above post, it seems everyone was mistaking turquiose for green. I know turquoise when I see turquoise, and I just figured everyone else knew it too since it's been that colour - or something very similar to it - ever since Mercedes pitched the mock-up of the BGP-001 back when they bought Brawn, and it didn't receive any complaints back then. With no other obvious source of green, to my mind you were all either talking about the grass - but if you don't know that grass is green, you probably shouldn't be on the internet - or the little bits of yellow on the wing mirrors. Knowing that the question of whether Bran's colours were white, black and yellow or white, black and green has come up before, I figured that's what you were talking about.

This is the pic I'm talking about, Captain.

Does that mean McLaren will use the same fuels and oil aswell?

Petronas over Mobil 1? Big mistake!

I know. And when I said "it's not green, it's yellow", I was referring to the detail on the rear wings.

It's U-G-L-Y

It was never going to be a cool looking as the sponsorless render! It won't even look as good as that photo suggests, the metallic tinge on the teal/green won't appear in 'real life' unless they colour chrome it - unlikely.

I see no yellow on the rear wings.

But it doesn't matter, the car will probably not look like that.

This, if accurate, is a confusing quote from Petronas (last week):Why would he say this while negotiating with Mercedes?

Sorry, I meant rear mirror.

Don't look at me like that. It's late, alright?

Indeed. So Merc will work with two big lubricant firms on and off track?

That's not even what the car - much less the livery - is going to look like.

Lubricant technology among the big oil companies, is more or less the same. Petronas will supply Mercedes the required specification of lubricants needed. Mercedes is a premier brand, this Petronas deal is in likelyhood more lucrative than the deal offered by Mobil. Official oil and fuel supplier to Mercedes, is serious kudos for Petronas.