Aston Martin has been forced to raised £635 million in new funding as it continues to fight its way out of the mess of its catastrophic 2018 IPO. The new investment will be made up from a mix of a new share issues and additional investment from Executive Chairman Lawrence Stroll and Mercedes-Benz AG, along with new investment from the Saudi Arabia Private Investment Fund (PIF) that will see it take a 17 percent stake in the company.

Stroll and his board had earlier rejected an approach by former owners Invest Industrial and Chinese car giant Geely, to buy a stake in Aston Martin for £1.03 billion.

‘I did not take over a healthy company’ is a strong opening gambit, but Lawrence Stroll has never been one to pull his punches, and you get a clear sense that the 62-year-old hasn’t occupied all those chairmen’s seats without first climbing off the fence. Aston Martin was in a bad place in 2020. Now, 24 months after taking control of the embattled car company following the catastrophic public listing under Andy Palmer, the Canadian billionaire is running us through his plans for the next five years and beyond. 

That 2018 IPO had seen Aston’s share price crash almost immediately after the bell on London’s Stock Exchange rang out, the money raised going to previous shareholders and executives rather than finding its way back into the business where it was needed most. For a company that was starved of cash before it went public, it was seemingly no better off now its financial laundry was being hung out in public for all to see.

Having committed to converting vast aircraft hangars into factories to produce the much-needed DBX, building a hypercar that would be as quick as an F1 car, relaunching Lagonda as a luxury electric brand, committing to a Le Mans programme without any agreed regulations in place, and announcing a family of mid-engined supercars to go with the traditional front-engined GT and sports cars… The public float designed to pay for it all wasn’t the golden goose it was hoped to be, especially as the to-do list was enough to make technical partner Mercedes-Benz wince. 

‘I spoke to the previous shareholders a month before their IPO, but they didn’t want to know,’ says Stroll. ‘They didn’t want any disruption or distraction to their IPO plans.’ The Canadian had made contact because he was then the new owner of Racing Point Force India, a Formula 1 team he had brought out of administration in 2018. Having been around the F1 circus since the Team Lotus days three decades ago – ‘I learnt a lot and lost a few million dollars’ – he knew that without an OEM backer you were going nowhere fast in F1. 

‘There was only one OEM not in F1 that had the status for F1, but Aston Martin had a sticker on a Red Bull, so I said to the car guys, “I’ll give you an F1 team, paint the cars British Racing Green.” But they turned me down.

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