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Brian Merkler joins Horizon Aircraft as CFO, ahead of company’s anticipated business combination with Pono Capital Three

Robin­son Air­craft Ltd., doing busi­ness as Hori­zon Air­craft, has announced the expan­sion of its lead­er­ship team with the appoint­ment of sea­soned finan­cial avi­a­tion exec­u­tive Bri­an Merk­er as Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer.

Merk­er brings more than 20 years of senior finan­cial man­age­ment expe­ri­ence to Hori­zon, span­ning both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, includ­ing 10 years serv­ing in the avi­a­tion sec­tor.

Most recent­ly, he served as Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer of Sky­ser­vice Busi­ness Avi­a­tion, sup­port­ing their growth efforts in air­craft man­age­ment, main­te­nance, fixed-based oper­a­tions, char­ter, and bro­ker­age.

Pri­or to Sky­ser­vice Busi­ness Avi­a­tion, Merk­er was Vice Pres­i­dent of Finance at Dis­cov­ery Air, a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny that includ­ed a diverse range of avi­a­tion relat­ed ser­vices.

From 2007 to 2012, he served as Vice Pres­i­dent of Finance at Score Media, a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny focused on sports broad­cast and tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion. Merkler began his career in the KPMG audit prac­tice with sig­nif­i­cant expo­sure to SEC reg­is­trants at the com­mence­ment of the Sar­banes-Oxley leg­is­la­tion.

Com­ment­ing on his new appoint­ment, he said: “I am delight­ed to join the excep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed team of design and man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­fes­sion­als at Hori­zon Air­craft. I look for­ward to lever­ag­ing my pre­vi­ous chief finan­cial offi­cer respon­si­bil­i­ties and expe­ri­ence in avi­a­tion to man­age a sound finan­cial oper­a­tion with sharp finan­cial over­sight.

“My expe­ri­ence will help sup­port the Company’s growth ini­tia­tives and cap­i­tal deploy­ment plans as Hori­zon devel­ops its full-scale air­craft and its vision of build­ing a bet­ter future.”

Hori­zon Air­craft is devel­op­ing one of the world’s first hybrid eVTOL that is to be able to fly most of its mis­sion exact­ly like a nor­mal air­craft, while offer­ing indus­try-lead­ing speed, range, and oper­a­tional util­i­ty.

The com­pa­ny hopes to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its Cavorite X7 eVTOL quick­ly and then enter the mar­ket and ser­vice a broad spec­trum of ear­ly use cas­es.

Mr Merkler joins Hori­zon on the back on sev­er­al key announce­ments this year. In August 2023, the com­pa­ny and Pono Cap­i­tal Three, Inc. entered into a pro­posed busi­ness com­bi­na­tion in August 2023 to form a com­bined pub­lic com­pa­ny. Upon clos­ing, the new­ly com­bined com­pa­ny will trade on the NASDAQ under the sym­bol “HOVR.”

Hori­zon also recent­ly secured $6.7 mil­lion CAD invest­ment from Can­so Coun­cil.

Bran­don Robin­son, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Hori­zon Air­craft, said: “We are excit­ed to offi­cial­ly wel­come Bri­an to the Hori­zon Air­craft man­age­ment team and lead our finan­cial oper­a­tions into our next stage of growth as we make sig­nif­i­cant strides towards our pub­lic list­ing.

“Brian’s advanced finan­cial man­age­ment skills in the pub­lic and pri­vate mar­kets with­in the aero­space indus­try close­ly tracks with Horizon’s core busi­ness. We have suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed the man­u­fac­tur­ing and design of sev­er­al sub-scale pro­to­type eVTOL air­craft and with the addi­tion of Brian’s finan­cial acu­men, we are well-posi­tioned for a smooth tran­si­tion of Hori­zon as a pub­lic com­pa­ny and to accel­er­ate our next phase of growth.”

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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