Formula 1 (F1) has established a multi-year partnership with Standard Chartered (London), which is to become its Official Wealth Management and Corporate and Investment Banking Partner as of 2026. In addition, Standard Chartered will be supporting the all-female driving series F1 Academy, “both on track and beyond.”
According to Roberto Hoornweg, its CEO of Corporate & Investment Banking, Standard Chartered operates in 19 of F1’s 21 race markets. The bank describes itself as serving “corporate, institutional and affluent clients” in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Through another multi-year deal, signed a year earlier, F1 has a second banking partner, on the retail side: Santander. This other deal includes within its scope the Santander subsidiary Openbank, which at the deal’s signing was already Europe’s largest purely digital bank by deposits and has since made its debut in the US.
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Its F1 deal aside, Standard Chartered has been the Main Club Partner to Liverpool FC for the past 16 years. It is also the sponsor of ten footraces, among them London’s Great City Race and the marathons of Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Jersey, Singapore and Hanoi.
Last April, moreover, Standard Chartered inaugurated under its Global Private Bank an unnamed “alternative fund” with a focus on “sports, media and entertainment” for “ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) and high-net-worth (HNW) clients.”
The fund’s investments and size are undisclosed, but the rationale behind it is public: the “growing trend in sports investing,” with “major sports leagues and teams seeking alternative capital financing options.” Of particular interest is the growth in the value of media contracts, which the bank saw as rising 16 to 17 percent over the previous ten years, and the recent signing of “record-breaking broadcast deals.”
