Christian Horner at F1 Live in London, July 2017. Photo: Ben Sutherland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Christian Horner, who ran Red Bull’s Formula 1 team out of Milton Keynes, England, for 20 years, was paid more than €117 million in severance by two Red Bull companies, according to figures UA.NEWS reported on October 8 from accounts filed at Companies House, the UK’s company register. Backfire News has not yet read the pay notes in the filings themselves, so every figure below is as UA.NEWS reported it.
UA.NEWS said one Red Bull company paid Horner €39.19 million in severance and €5.2 million in salary up to his departure, and that Red Bull Technology paid €78.38 million in severance and €10.56 million in salary. Red Bull Technology Limited filed group accounts for 2025 on October 5, 2026, and Red Bull Racing Limited filed full accounts the same day. UA.NEWS did not name the first company. It also reported that the accounts of Red Bull Powertrains and Red Bull Advanced Technologies say the relevant executives were paid by other companies in the group.
The €117.56 million covers severance only
UA.NEWS gave Horner’s total as €117.56 million. That matches the two severance payments, which add up to €117.57 million. Counting the two salary figures too, Backfire News’s math puts the four numbers at about €133.33 million, so the headline total leaves out €15.76 million. The Technology severance figure is also exactly double the first company’s. The notes in the PDFs will show how each company labels its numbers.
The register logged his exit weeks before the team announced it
Companies House records Horner’s termination as a director of Red Bull Technology Limited effective August 12, 2025, and of Red Bull Racing Limited effective August 13, 2025, both filed on August 14. Red Bull’s own announcement, dated Milton Keynes, September 22, 2025, said Horner would leave the team that day. That puts him off both boards more than five weeks before the team said he was going. In that statement Horner described watching his staff flourish as “a subsidiary of an Energy Drinks company,” and subsidiaries are where the rules on severance get specific.
Why a payout line doesn’t show whether shareholders voted
Under section 217 of the Companies Act 2006, a company may not make a payment for loss of office to a director unless its members approve it by resolution, and the members must first be given a memorandum setting out the payment, including its amount. A payment to a director of the company’s holding company needs approval from the members of both companies. Subsection (4) drops the requirement for members that are themselves wholly-owned subsidiaries of another body corporate.
Section 220 exempts payments made in good faith in discharge of an existing legal obligation, as damages for breach of one, by way of pension for past services, or to settle or compromise a claim over the end of someone’s office or employment. For a section 217 payment, the obligation cannot have been entered into in connection with the loss of office, so a contract drafted around the exit does not count. A payment a standing contract promised, or one that settles a dispute, needs no shareholder vote. The filings record what was paid. UA.NEWS’s report does not say which route the money took, and every Companies House filing page carries a notice that the register does not check the accuracy of what is filed.
What the filings cover and what they don’t
The 5 October filings are the first from either company to cover the year Horner left. The accounts each company filed for 2024, in September 2025, predate his exit. Horner has since been pursued by other teams, which Backfire News followed in its coverage of his Ferrari talk, but nothing in the register ties any of that to the payments. The Red Bull Technology accounts run 46 pages and Red Bull Racing’s run 27, and the pay notes in those pages are where the severance gets its legal label.
Should a company have to put a payout this size to a shareholder vote even when an older contract already promised the money?
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