Bernie Ecclestone is a British business entrepreneur who is better known as Bernard Charles Ecclestone. He served as the CEO of the Formula One Group. Between 2007 and 2011, he and his business partner Flavio Briatore owned the English football team Queens Park Rangers. He is currently married to Fabiana Flosi after two failed marriages with Ivy Bamford and Slavica Ecclestone.

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Bernie Ecclestone Net Worth:

Bernie Ecclestone is a British businessman with a $3.3 billion net worth. He was named the fourth-richest person in the United Kingdom in 2011, with a net worth of $4.2 billion at the time. The drop in his net worth is most likely due to a recent divorce settlement that left his ex-wife Slavica Ecclestone with a reputed $1 billion to $1.5 billion. He has two daughters with Slavica Ecclestone, a former Armani model: Petra and Tamara Ecclestone, who are both notable socialites, models, and businesswomen.

Early Life and Education:

Bernie Ecclestone was born in Bungay, Suffolk, England, on October 28, 1930.

During 1938, the family relocated to Danson Road, Bexleyheath, South East London. His father is a fisherman.

He attended Wissett Primary School and then West Central Secondary School in Dartford, but dropped out at the age of 16 to work as an assistant in the chemical laboratory at the local gasworks, where he tested and purified gas. He went on to Woolwich Polytechnic to study chemistry.

Career:

Bernie began his business trading motorcycle spare parts before partnering with Fred Compton to form the Compton & Eccleston motorcycle dealership shortly after WWII ended. He raced in the 500cc Formula 3 Series in 1949 at this time. He also raced in a limited number of races, including at his home track, Brand Hatch, where he had a number of excellent finishes and a few wins.

Following many incidents at Brands Hatch, he first resigned from racing and focused on his company. He then went on to make successful real estate and credit financing investments, as well as operate the Weekend Car Auctions company.

In 1957, he returned to racing as the manager of driver Stuart Lewis Evans, purchasing two chassis from the defunct Connaught Formula One team, which had drivers such as Stuart Lewis-Evans, Roy Salvadori, Archie Scott Brown, and Ivor Bueb over the years.

The next year, he joined the Vanwell squad and took over as Lewis-Evans’ manager. Lewis died six days later from the effects of the wounds he received when his engine burst at the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix. He had to retire from racing again again.

His association with Salvadori in the 1970s led to him becoming Jochen Rindt’s manager and a partial owner of Rindt’s Lotus Formula 2 squad in 1970. Rindt died in a car accident on the Monza circuit during the 1970 World Championship, but was given the title posthumously.

He bought the Brabham team from Ron Taueanac in 1971, after Ecclestone offered him a £100,000 offer, which he eventually accepted. He built the squad to meet his idea of a Formula One team during the 1972 season, and he promoted Gordon Murry to chief designer during the 1973 season.

When Alfa Romeo began testing their own Formula One car throughout the season, the Brabham-Alfa era came to an end with the up-and-coming young Brazilian Nelson Piquet. Nelson and Bernie had a long and close friendship, and the team also won the season in 1981 and 1983.

The squad competed until 1985, when Nelson was forced to leave after seven years. After the 1987 season, he sold Brabham to Joachim Luhti, a Swiss businessman, for $5 million.

Along with Frank Williams, Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Ken Tyrrell, and Max Mosley, he founded the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) in 1974. With Mosley, he became the chief executive of FOCA in 1978.

After working for the Formula One Group for numerous years, he was fired as CEO on January 23, 2017, following a takeover by Liberty Media in 2016.

In addition, on September 3, 2007, he and Flavio Briatore purchased Queen Park Rangers (QPR) Football Club. In December 2010, he bought the bulk of the shares from Flavio Briatore, becoming the company’s largest shareholder with 62 percent of the stock. He and Briatore sold their full interest in the club to Tony Fernandes, the owner of the Caterham Formula One team, the following year.

Personal Life:

Bernie has been married three times throughout his life. In mid-1952, Bernie married Ivy Bamford. Deborah Ecclestone is his daughter from his first marriage. He was then joined up with Tuana Tan, with whom he enjoyed a 17-year romance. After his second wife, Slavica Radic, became pregnant, the pair split up.

He married Slavica Ecclestone Radic, an international fashion model, in 1985 after his divorce from Tuana Tan. Despite their 28-year age difference, the husband and wife married. They even managed to communicate across language barriers, as he spoke English and she knew Croatian and Italian. There is also a height disparity between them: Bernie is 5 feet 2 inches tall, while Slavica stands at 6 feet 2 inches tall.

Tamara and Petra were their two daughters. Slavica filed for divorce and moved on with her girls after 23 years of marriage in November 2008, and the divorce was finalized in 2009.

He gave Slavica Ecclestone $1 to $1.5 billion as part of the divorce settlement. Later, during Bernie’s German bribery prosecution, it was revealed that Silvia had agreed to pay him £60 million every year as part of their 2009 divorce settlement.

He married Fabiana Flosi, Vice-President of Marketing for the Brazilian Grand Prix, in April 2012, after three years of dating. On August 26, 2012, the pair secretly married, and their relationship was made public.

Controversy:

After Gerhard Gribkowsky confessed to accusations of tax evasion, breach of trust, and receiving bribes, Ecclestone was accused of bribery. According to the prospector and defendant, he paid the former banker $44 million to get rid of the lender’s Formula One shareholding.

He further revealed that Gribkowsky coerced him into disclosing information about a family trust held by Ecclestone’s ex wife to UK tax authorities. According to an interview taken by a German prospector in the Gerhard Gribkowsky case, Ecclestone was investigated by the UK tax authorities for nine years before Inland Revenue decided to settle the issue in 2008 for £10 million.

He was involved in a political dispute in 1997 over the British Labour Party’s cigarette sponsorship policy, and he also made a statement regarding IndyCar racer Danica Patrick, saying that women should be clad in white like all domestic appliances, later apologizing for his remarks.

Susie Wolff launched the Dare to be Different campaign in 2016, following his 2015 campaign for an all-woman championship, which was met with opposition from drivers and manufacturers alike. He claimed that teams would not select a female driver if they could find a competent male, but she proved him wrong.

According to a Times interview published on July 4, 2009, Ecclestone remarked, “Apart from the fact that Hitler was taken away and convinced to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was able to get things done in the way that he could command a lot of people.” Later, he apologized, claiming that his remarks were misinterpreted, and that “I’m just sorry for being a fool. Please accept my heartfelt apologies.”