London court orders Force India to pay Rs 130 lakh to broker who helped clinch 'Pink Panther' sponsorship

LONDON: A London court has ordered Vijay Mallya’s Force India - in liquidation - to pay £150k (Rs 130 lakh) to a broker which helped it get its multi-million ‘Pink Panther’ BWT sponsorship deal.
The commercial court of the High Court ruled that AMP Advisory and Management Partners (AMP) in Liechtenstein, “made a contribution” to the title sponsorship deal with Austrian water technology company BWT which led to the cars becoming pink and would have been worth €74 million (Rs 575 crore) had it gone through to the full term.In the end Force India only received €29 million (Rs 225 crore) as it went into administration in July 2018.
AMP claims it introduced BWT to Force India and provided other assistance to clinch the deal. It maintains Force India agreed to pay a commission of 15% of the sponsorship fee up to €12.5 million and 12% thereafter. The sponsorship agreement was signed on March 13 2017 but AMP was never paid.
Force India's assets and business were sold in August 2018 to Racing Point and BWT currently sponsors Racing Point.
Mallya, who still owns a 42.5 stake in Force India and was its team principal, gave evidence at the trial, saying AMP had not performed any services that warranted commission and it was Toto Wolff, team principal of Mercedes-AMG F1 racing team, who had recommended Force India to BWT, not AMP.
The case hinged on what precisely happened at a lunch in Dr Mallya’s kitchen in Ladywalk, Tewin on 20 February 2017 with a Tara Ramos, who used to organise Formula 1 after parties on behalf of Mallya, and was at that time working in partnership with AMP to find sponsors for Formula 1 racing teams.
Ramos claims he told Mallya he had a potential sponsorship deal conditional upon the car base colour being changed to pink and Mallya confirmed that Force India would be interested. “Mr Mallya confirmed that this was ‘fine’ and that ‘naturally nothing comes for free’,” he told the court.
Mallya said it was a social lunch with barely any business discussed. BWT's name was not disclosed and he did not have any discussion about commission and would not have agreed a commission on such sparse information, though he accepted the idea a new title sponsor was discussed.
Otmar Szafnauer, COO of Force India at the time, in his written statement, said: "Reputationally, sponsors did not want to be associated with the team because of its connections to Dr Mallya. In business terms, sponsors were wary of us because of doubts over solvency. "
Mrs Justice Moulder ruled that AMP “did not introduce the sponsorship opportunity” and “no binding contract to pay a commission was formed orally on 20 February 2017.” “I find that Mr Wolff and not the claimant introduced the sponsorship opportunity to Force India,” she said.
“It is clear on the evidence that the claimant made a contribution to getting the deal done in terms of acting as an intermediary between BWT and Force India. In my view the enrichment in the form of the provision of the services by the claimant was unjust and the court should therefore impose an obligation on the defendant to pay for the benefits resulting from the services performed. The court is not valuing the introduction of the sponsorship opportunity but is valuing the other services provided by the claimant which made a contribution to the deal," she said.