APRIL 23, 2002
The knives come out at Jordan
Eddie Jordan will oversee sporting and commercial issues.
"Jordan has always been at its best when lean and efficient," said Jordan. "Once you sense complacency creeping in, or costs becoming exorbitant, a prudent business needs to take action. We have an incredible group of people at Jordan who work tirelessly to achieve on track success. These changes will generate a more efficient structure at a time when our focus is on the performance and reliability of our cars."
The moves are fairly radical given Jordan's hands-off style of management in recent years. Eddie has spent a lot of his time trying to build up the Jordan brand rather than working closely with the team and the result of this has been that something like 30% of the team has changed in the course of the last year. A lot of this was down to the frustration that the team was not investing in new facilities - despite the fact that Jordan raised something like $60m at the end of 1998 when he sold 40% of the team to venture capitalists Warburg, Pincus & Co.