Lilium has appointed Oliver Vogelgesang as chief financial officer (CFO) and Sebastien Borel as chief commercial officer (CCO). Oliver will take over from Geoffrey Richardson, who is stepping down following a successful Lilium listing on NASDAQ.
As experienced aerospace executives currently in senior leadership roles at Lilium, Oliver and Sebastien will support CEO Klaus Roewe in the continued development of Lilium’s eVTOL jet.
Oliver joined Lilium in July 2021 as senior VP of finance and control, tasked with building the controlling and investor relations functions and bringing almost 30 years of finance and aerospace experience, most recently serving as managing director of finance at Airbus Germany and senior VP for the Airbus A320 programme.
Previously, he spent four years as VP Investor Relations at Airbus Group and held several additional roles in finance, programme management, and restructuring programmes at Airbus. He studied aerospace engineering at the Technical University of Munich and holds an MBA from the University of Saarbrücken.
Sebastien joined Lilium in November 2021 as business vice president and was appointed senior VP Commercial in April 2022. Prior to joining Lilium, Sebastien held various key management positions at Honeywell and Airbus in addition to his start-up experience in the US.
Since his start at Lilium, he has finalised contracts for orders of more than 600 aircraft. He attended the French merchant officer academy and holds commercial pilot licences.
Geoffrey Richardson joined the company in November 2020 as chief financial officer, and was instrumental in Lilium’s fundraising, including taking the company to a successful NASDAQ listing and more recently closing a $119 million capital raise in the last quarter of 2022 from existing shareholders, new investors, and strategic partners.
He commented: “I am proud to have personally contributed to laying the structural, financial, and organisational basis for Lilium to succeed in its mission to accelerate the decarbonisation of aviation.
“This next phase of Lilium’s industrialisation requires a team effort with physical presence on site in Germany that I cannot deliver from California. I am convinced Lilium is on track to be the leader in introducing electric sustainable flight.”
Lilium chairman Tom Enders added: “Geoffrey has delivered to Lilium what a European aviation start-up could have never achieved alone: an early, quick, and successful listing on NASDAQ that gave the company access to the public equity markets.
“Geoffrey brought together a high calibre group of long-term investors committed to Lilium’s vision. As we begin building our first prototypes, we are thrilled to have such proven senior executives as Oliver and Sebastien to continue the mission alongside Klaus and the rest of the leadership team.”