Toto Wolff is no longer a shareholder of the Williams F1 Team, as he sells his remaining stakes in the team. At one time, the CEO of the Mercedes F1 Team owned 15% of the team.
In 2009, Toto Wolff made an investment into the Williams F1 Team. He purchased 15% of the team from Patrick Head, former technical director and co-founder of the team, when he exited the team. Head kept a 9% stake.
Wolff has completed selling his 15% to Brad Hollinger. Hollinger is an American businessman who owns Vibra Healthcare, a collection of private hospitals in the United States. The transaction was completed in three stages, with a 5% stake being sold to Hollinger each time.
The first transaction was in 2013, after Wolff was appointed CEO of the Mercedes F1 team and the director of the Mercedes motorsport division. Prior to the 2015 Formula One season, an additional 5% of the Williams team was transferred from Wolff to Hollinger, after the team suffered a financial loss due to the high costs of competing in 2014. Wolff sold his remaining stakes to Hollinger on Wednesday.
According to Wolff, he has been planning on selling all of his stakes since 2013, but had been looking for the right investor. This was the result of an agreement with Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes. Wolff id confident in his choice to sell the stakes to Hollinger, saying he is a “serious businessman with the right long-term perspective about Williams and Formula One”.
“I am surprised how emotional I am about this day, to be cutting my final business ties to Sir Frank and to the team at Williams,” said Wolff. “I am proud to have joined the sport with a team of true passionate racers, where we had to make spot-on decisions for the future of the business and its employees; I learned some lessons the hard way, but they were all valuable for understanding the industry.”
Hollinger is now the second largest shareholder in the team. Sir Frank Williams owns a controlling stake of 52%, while Sir Patrick Head owns 9%. An additional 20% is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, while the remaining 4% is part of an employee share scheme organized by the team.
