Thursday March 16th, 2000

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone won 7.5 million pounds ($11.75 million) on Thursday after a UK court ruled his firm was entitled to keep a payment for a Korean Grand Prix which never got off the grid.

Ecclestone and Sepoong Engineering Construction Co Ltd struck a deal in 1996 whereby Sepoong would have the exclusive rights to hold grand prix races in South Korea from 1998 to 2002, but a race site was never developed, a High Court judge said.

Justice Longmore said the plan had been to build a motor racing circuit at Kunsan City in South Korea and that Ecclestone's company, Formula One Administration, drew 7.5 million pounds on a credit note in April 1998.

Sepoong sought the return of the money paid out to Formula One because they said Ecclestone had agreed not to draw on the letter of credit and not to enforce it.

"There was no binding variation of the 1996 agreement to the effect that the letter of credit would not be drawn," Longmore said, addin that Sepoong's claim must therefor fail.

Formula One had claimed that by the time the Grand Prix calendar for 1998 was about to be produced the site was still "little more than a field."

Ecclestone last month agreed to sell 37.5 percent of his Formula One business to U.S. private equity firm Hellman & Freidman for 625 million pounds ($1 billion).

The sale valued Formula One Adminstration at 1.7 billion pounds ($2.68 billion) and left the Ecclestone family trust with 50 percent of the equity. ($1=.6349 Pound).