Moscow. September 21. Apple is negotiating to buy British McLaren Technology Group, which manufactures sports cars and owns a team of “Formula 1”, reports the Financial Times. As noted izdanie, Apple is already more than two years working on the project driverless car (it’s not officially confirmed), and the acquisition of McLaren can be seen as a strategic investment. Representatives of both companies declined to comment this information.
According to the newspaper’s sources, the transaction value could reach us $1.3-1.95 billion Thus, this will be the biggest acquisition of Apple since buying the headphone manufacturer Beats Electronics for $3 billion in 2013. Revenues McLaren in 2014 amounted to 265 million pounds ($344 million), a loss of 22.6 million pounds ($29.3 million). More current data on the financial performance of the company was not published.
Apple shows interest in the technological development of McLaren and its patent portfolio, said FT sources familiar with the negotiations. At the same time, they stressed that the prospects of a deal uncertain, as changes within Apple. In 2014 the company formed a team that worked on the project of the electric vehicle, consisting of several hundred engineers and designers. For the past few weeks Apple has left dozens of employees working in that direction. Work as report edition sources, it was decided to focus on creating systems for electric vehicles, not machines as such.
