Mike Wuerthele
After rumors swirled of a potential Apple buy of boutique sports car vendor McLaren Automotive, the car manufacturer has denied that it is having investment talks with Apple at this time.
The earlier claims initially published by the Financial Times and independently backed up by The New York Times claimed that Apple started negotiations to purchase McLaren for between £1 billion and £1.5 billion ($1.3 billion to $2 billion) several months ago, around the time that rumors were circulating about Apple buying McLaren's racing team.
McLaren has since issued a statement, declaring that the company "is not in discussion with Apple in respect of any potential investment" at this time. Apple has declined comment on the matter.
Apple's "Project Titan" was discovered in early 2015. AppleInsider discovered the automotive project was being run out of a top-secret facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. in early 2015.
Project Titan allegedly involved more than 1,000 employees, including existing Apple engineers extracted from other divisions, incorporated with auto industry specialists hired away from other car companies.
In early September, Apple was said to have laid off dozens of workers from the as-yet unannounced Apple Car project. The layoffs were said to be because of a shift away from a bumper-to-bumper plan, with the future Project Titan focus homing in on automotive software like self-driving cars.
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29 Comments
Who's the source and what were their motives? Also, if you are in acquisition talks they are not investment talks—different. If you are buying a company you're not investing in it per se.
Which is corporate-speak for "even if we were (and we probably are) we wouldn't admit it."
From NYT article:
"Apple has been talking with McLaren, the automaker known for its Formula One racecars, about an investment in the company, according to two people briefed on the talks who asked to remain anonymous because the discussions were confidential."
It never ceases to amaze me how many people break the law, both corporate and governmental, simply to get a story. I hope McLaren seeks out the "anonymous" persons and tars and feathers them. There's no such thing about freedom of speech when it comes to corporate discussions, whether they are confidential or not. As for the NYT and Financial Times publishing these rumors, I hope McLaren goes after them because they received and probably paid for confidential information, which was stolen because these anonymous persons didn't have permission to disclose them so they were in effect stealing the information from McLaren. It's time people are held accountable for all this theft of confidential information.
McLaren Automotive Limited is a private company.