Vertical Aerospace Continues “to Achieve Rapid Progress with Latest Leadership Appointments”   

The dark days of last August are now a dis­tant mem­o­ry for Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, with the com­pa­ny back on track and mak­ing rapid progress. The lat­est exam­ples are the two recent appoint­ments for impor­tant lead­er­ship roles at Ver­ti­cal.

First off is Stu­art Simp­son who has been appoint­ed as the company’s new CEO, after being CFO, tak­ing over from Founder, Stephen Fitz­patrick. A sea­soned FTSE100 exec­u­tive with a career that spans 30 years, includ­ing lead­er­ship roles across the tech­nol­o­gy, auto­mo­tive and logis­tics sec­tors, he is respon­si­ble for lead­ing the exe­cu­tion of Vertical’s strat­e­gy as it pro­gress­es towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the VX4 air­craft, bring­ing it to mar­ket, and launch­ing fur­ther fundrais­ing activ­i­ty.

Simp­son ini­tial­ly joined the com­pa­ny in 2023 from Avast, a FTSE100 glob­al leader in dig­i­tal secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy. He was Group CFO there, respon­si­ble for the company’s USD9 bil­lion merg­er with Nor­ton­Life­Lock in 2021. Pri­or to that, Simp­son held the roles of Inter­im CEO, CFO and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at Roy­al Mail Group, over­see­ing the Group’s return to the FTSE100. At the same time, he was a Board mem­ber at GLS Group, a glob­al, tech­nol­o­gy led, par­cel ser­vice provider.

He com­ment­ed, “It’s been phe­nom­e­nal to expe­ri­ence the progress Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has achieved since I first joined. I look for­ward to work­ing with our for­mi­da­ble team in pro­gress­ing the path to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, bring­ing in addi­tion­al invest­ment and tak­ing the VX4 to mar­ket.”

Fitz­patrick added, “Stuart’s exten­sive lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence in high growth tech­nol­o­gy based com­pa­nies make him incred­i­bly well qual­i­fied to lead the com­pa­ny into its next phase.”

The changes come as the final assem­bly of the new gen­er­a­tion full-scale VX4 pro­to­type nears com­ple­tion, with the air­craft on track to begin a robust test flight pro­gram ahead of intend­ed pub­lic demon­stra­tions at Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al Air­show and Heathrow Air­port lat­er this year. 

The pro­to­type fea­tures next gen­er­a­tion pro­pellers; will use Vertical’s pro­pri­etary bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy for the first time; and incor­po­rates much more of the company’s lead­ing aero­space part­ners’ tech­nol­o­gy. 

Mean­while, Fitz­patrick, who has recent­ly com­mit­ted UKP50 mil­lion of his own mon­ey to the com­pa­ny, will con­tin­ue to play a promi­nent role in Ver­ti­cal as a Board mem­ber, focused on busi­ness strat­e­gy and work­ing with the exec­u­tive team to deliv­er on the company’s vision.   

In addi­tion, the com­pa­ny has strength­ened this Board with the appoint­ment of Ben Sto­ry, a for­mer Direc­tor and Exec­u­tive Team mem­ber at Rolls-Royce. He was also a Board mem­ber at Trans­port for Lon­don and MD at Citi. 

Sto­ry brings 30 years of expe­ri­ence at the high­est lev­el of indus­tri­al tech­nol­o­gy, ener­gy, trans­porta­tion and glob­al finance and will bring invalu­able expe­ri­ence to the com­pa­ny along its path to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.  

Sto­ry remarked, “I’ve been fol­low­ing the excit­ing progress Ver­ti­cal has been mak­ing in this nascent sec­tor. I look for­ward to play­ing my part in tak­ing the busi­ness into its next and excit­ing phase by bring­ing the VX4 to mar­ket.”   

Stu­art Simp­son

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has 1,500 pre-orders of its eVTOL air­craft worth USD6 bil­lion, with cus­tomers across four con­ti­nents, includ­ing Vir­gin Atlantic, Amer­i­can Air­lines, Japan Air­lines, GOL and Bris­tow. 

The company’s expe­ri­enced lead­er­ship team come from top tier auto­mo­tive and aero­space com­pa­nies such as Rolls-Royce, Air­bus, Heathrow, GM and Leonar­do.

For more infor­ma­tion

http://vertical-aerospace.com

(Images: Ver­ti­cal Aero­space)

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