Genii selling Lotus Renault shares?

There are reports from highly reliable sources that Gérard Lopez and his partner in GenII Capital Eric Lux, have sold their shares in the Renault F1 Team Ltd company, which was renamed Lotus Renault GP Ltd on December 16. The suggestion is that the Genii Capital shares have been sold to Group Lotus. If this is true then the team should now be 100%-owned by Lotus, as Renault announced on December 8 that it had sold its shares to Genii Capital. We have heard, however, that Renault may still be involved and could have re-acquired a share of the team, on rather different terms to the previous arrangement.

It is worth noting, however, that on December 8, according to records in Companies House, Renault’s Jean-Francois Caubet and Genii’s Eric Boullier both had their Renault F1 directorships terminated, although Boullier is still running the team.

There have been rumors for some time that Genii Capital would sell the team to Group Lotus, but the adoption of the Lotus Renault GP name, and the subsequent company filings, suggest that Renault may still be involved, if only to have a say in what happens to the cars that bear its name in Formula 1. The name of the chassis cannot be changed unless all the teams in F1 agree to allow that to happen. Joe Saward