There’s a wonderful rumour that’s circulating about Sir Fred Goodwin taking over from Max Mosley as head of Formula 1, the fast car racing league that travels the world in a carnival of cars and cash.
It's not a popular rumour with some, as there’s a lot of anger over Sir Fred’s £4.2 million pension pay off last year. This combined with his dreadful handling of RBS in the silly takeover of ABN AMRO means that anything going well for him will cause irritation.
But taking over Formula 1, a bad thing?
I’m not so sure as, with my futurism lens on, I thought I’d guess about next year’s racing season.
Here goes:
So yes, here are the front runners for the 2009 Formula 1 racing season, with McLaren and Ferrari hotly tipped to race it out this season. Oh dear, what is this? In a shock move the outside runner Renault has made a leveraged buyout of the McLaren stock … all this because of the very mention that the Red Bull Team might be interested in teaming up with them.
Ah well, that’s no concern except that leaving the nuts off the wheels of the McLaren car may be a cost saving device too far, but the President of the FIA said in a statement this morning: “it’s just nuts”.
Anyways, he’s allowed the move to go ahead and then, just as the race was about to begin, he’s only gone and allowed Sauber-BMW to sell off parts of the team. Sure, admittedly, it’s only the engines, but that’s going to be a challenge for the guys to compete.
No worries though, as the race is about to begin and ... would you believe it? The Toyota lead car has only crashed at the first bend, with all the other cars coming in behind and getting knocked off the circuit.
What a dreadful start to the racing season, Sir Fred, can we have a statement?
Sir Fred?
Golly gosh and crikey, he’s only gone and disappeared with the prize money.
... of course, this is purely fictitious jest and is not meant to reflect any reality as
a) Sir Fred has a great PR man in the form of former News of the World Editor Phil Hall; and
b) I would never kick a man when he’s down, would I?
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
