McLaren could get a new owner with EV experience

British carmaker McLaren may be set for another ownership change, with an Abu Dhabi ‘investment vehicle’ declaring its intention to buy the brand from Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund.

In a joint media statement, Abu Dhabi’s CYVN Holdings and Bahrain’s Mumtalakat – the current owner of the McLaren Group – announced they’d entered a non-binding agreement for the former to acquire full ownership of McLaren Automotive.

CYVN also wants a non-controlling stake in the McLaren Group, which wholly owns the McLaren Automotive supercar division, and has majority ownership (67 per cent) of McLaren Racing, responsible for the brand’s motorsport ventures.

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According to CYVN, it wants to use its existing experience with other high-end carmakers – such as Chinese electric vehicle (EV) brand Nio, plus formerly British firms Gordon Murray Technologies and Forseven – to help McLaren launch battery-powered models.

“This transformative investment by CYVN Holdings would bring access to additional capital, advanced engineering expertise and pioneering technology, particularly in the field of electric vehicles,” said the company. 

“It would also allow McLaren to benefit from the broad cross-industry experience of CYVN Holdings’ team, building on CYVN Holdings’ previous strategic investments in NIO Inc., Forseven and Gordon Murray Technologies.”

McLaren had previously been rumoured to be developing an electric SUV as a more mass-market offering, however McLaren CEO Michael Leiters recently told Road and Track it would likely be a plug-in hybrid, with some kind of input from another brand.

“To unlock our full potential as a company, we believe there is a second stage to enlarge and expand our lineup beyond the segment where we are today,” Mr Leiters said. 

“We have called this ‘shared performance,’ because you can share the performance with more people than you can have in a McLaren today.

“I think the smart way is with technology partnership, to find a partner and create synergies but not to lose anything which is core to McLaren and the DNA of our brand.

“If we do a PHEV, we want to understand if we can use our own powertrain. To integrate our powertrain into an existing platform – that would be the ideal world.”

Should CYVN become a full owner of the McLaren Group, it would represent the first time in almost two decades that Mumtalakat wouldn’t have a stake in the brand.

Mumtalakat’s stake in the McLaren Group has grown since it first took a 15 per cent share of the brand’s ownership in 2007, which eventually grew to 50 per cent in 2012 and more recently a 60 per cent stake in late 2022. 

It finally wholly acquired McLaren this March, which followed a £450 million ($870 million) investment in November 2023. 

MORE: Bahrain investors take full control of McLaren MORE: McLaren is working on an SUV, but don’t call it that