American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 222 January 2018 | Page 48

NEWS
BRIEFS
MV Agusta CEO Giovanni Castiglioni
was slapped with a suspended six-
month prison term in November after
being accused of stealing some
$2.3m of employee taxes. At the time
when MV had run out of money, the
tax had been deducted from
employee salaries by MV in the period
2013-2015, but never paid over to
the Italian tax authorities. Castiglioni
is also being pursued for personal
income tax evasion in a challenge to
his Swiss residency status for tax
purposes. Meanwhile, Castiglioni’s
uncle Gianfranco is being investigated
for a suspected Casti Group VAT (sales
tax) fraud of up to $1.3Bn.
Raleigh, North Carolina’s Ray
Price H-D has been sold by Ray’s
widow Jean to Arizona based
John Morroti - owner of four
motorcycle dealerships, three of
them Harley stores.
For the year through November 2017
Harley is in 6th spot in motorcycle
market share terms in Germany,
having sold 9,024 units YTD for a
reduced 9.5% share (having sold
11,210 units in Germany for a fifth
spot, 10.4% share in the same period
of 2016). The company remains ahead
of Ducati, Triumph and Suzuki.
Harley’s best seller there is the XL
1200 C (in 26th place, 975 units) and
has three other models in the Top 50
in Germany - Breakout, Dyna Street
Bob and XL 883 Iron.
Indian Motorcycle is in 14th spot
in market share terms for the
period January to November
2017 in Germany, having sold
642 units YTD for a 0.65%
market share (compared to 785
units for a 0.73% share for the
same period in 2016).
Zodiac International has been granted
TÜV approval on a range of popular
Californian-made Freedom
Performance exhaust system
and slip-on options.
Former Harley subsidiary MV Agusta
completes acquisition of the share
capital held by AMG Mercedes
Varese, Italy based “boutique”
motorcycle manufacturer and former
Harley-Davidson subsidiary MV Agusta
has finally completed the last stage of
divesting itself from the 25 percent
minority stake in MV Agusta Motor
S.p.A owned by German car giant
Mercedes AMG.
With the closing of the transaction, MV
Holding owns 100% of MV Agusta
Motor S.p.A., bringing an end to the
latest chapter in the storied saga of
MV’s survival.
AMG Mercedes paid € 30m for its 25
percent stake in 2014; however, in
March 2016 it was announced that the
company had filed a Chapter 11
process equivalent - AMG was no
longer prepared to fund the losses the
business was incurring, with a reported
40m euro of debt on its books.
At that stage the company was also
faced with needing to repay a 15m euro
loan it took from a consortium of Italian
banks in late 2014 to top up its cash
flow – having burned through the AMG
cash and the $20m dowry Harley-
Davidson left it with when the Keith
Wandell era response to the 2008
financial crisis saw it return ownership
to the prior owners (the Castiglioni
family) for the princely sum of $5.00.
At that point Harley wrote off the
$108m that then CEO Jim Ziemer had
agreed to pay for it (following repeated
failures to acquire Ducati) in the
summer of 2008, just before the
financial crisis hit.
Present Harley CEO Matt Levatich had
been despatched from his role heading
up Harley Europe to run MV, and is
widely regarded as having done an
excellent job. Massive investments
were made (an estimated $60m) in
R&D and retooling, and when MV got
itself back on its feet under the
Castiglionis (some $69m of bank debt
having been cleared as part of Harley’s
acquisition) the company’s engineering
and production was in its best shape
ever. The company was then able to
start producing a range of motorcycl es
whose current iterations are still
regarded as being among some of the
finest performance motorcycles in the
world.
The timing of Harley’s acquisition could
not have been worse, but the state
Levatich left MV in could not have been
better. Tragically the company’s
management was over-ambitious,
spending way too much on R&D and
Unveiled in the summer of 2017, the limited edition Brutale 800
‘America’ was a homage to the “glory days” of the brand in
America with the 1973 MV Agusta 750 S
Giovanni Castiglioni, MV Agusta
President: “This transaction with
ComSar Invest through a capital
increase and the acquisition of the
shares previously held by Mercedes
represents an important milestone
in our recovery plan”
failing to meet the unrealistic
production targets it had set itself.
The new owners are ComSar Invest, an
investment fund that is part of Black
Ocean Group, owned by Timur
Sardarov, a “Russian dynasty key player
in the production of oil and gas in
Eastern Europe.”
Timur Sardarov is the controlling
shareholder of ComSar Invest; New
York City based asset manager Black
Ocean Group is, in turn, part of the
Ocean Group, an investment vehicle
founded by entrepreneurs Oliver Ripley
and Timur Sardarov in 2005. Ocean has
interests in a diverse range of sectors
including private aviation, agriculture,
real estate, corporate finance, banking,
services, technology, media and
internet, with offices in New York,
London, Geneva and Moscow.
www.mvagusta.it