Lilium launches M&A Process with KPMG, targets program continuation towards first flight and certification  

Lil­i­um has appoint­ed KPMG to con­duct an open, trans­par­ent and fair Merg­ers & Acqui­si­tions (M&A) process and con­firmed first investor brief­in­gs will start soon.

The appoint­ment of KPMG fol­lowed the local court of Weilheim’s  approval of the insol­ven­cy fil­ing of Lilium’s Ger­man sub­sidiaries and the court’s grant­i­ng of Lilium’s appli­ca­tion for self-admin­is­tra­tion.

Pre­lim­i­nary insol­ven­cy pro­ceed­ings under self-admin­is­tra­tion are court-ordered restruc­tur­ing pro­ceed­ings aimed at pre­serv­ing the busi­ness. The man­age­ment remains in charge and leads the busi­ness through the pro­ceed­ings, sup­port­ed by restruc­tur­ing experts.

The com­pa­ny has also con­firmed work at its sub­sidiaries con­tin­ues, with more than 1,000 employ­ees engaged in pro­gress­ing towards the next sig­nif­i­cant pro­gram mile­stone, first manned flight, hav­ing been informed on the details of con­tin­ued employ­ee pay­ment.

Next steps

The court has appoint­ed two restruc­tur­ing-expe­ri­enced lawyers, Prof. Dr. Ger­rit Höl­zle and Dr. Thorsten Bieg as Chief Insol­ven­cy Offi­cers (CIOs) to the Ger­man sub­sidiaries’ Boards of Man­age­ment with imme­di­ate effect.

Both have already suc­cess­ful­ly advised a large num­ber of com­pa­nies in cri­sis sit­u­a­tions. Most recent­ly, they worked for Sen­vion and The Social Chain AG, among oth­ers. They will now over­see the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Lil­i­um’s Ger­man sub­sidiaries.

The Local Court of Weil­heim has also appoint­ed attor­ney Mr. Ivo-Mein­ert Will­rodt, Man­ag­ing Part­ner at PLUTA Recht­san­walts GmbH, as the pro­vi­sion­al cus­to­di­an.

The restruc­tur­ing expert is an attor­ney and spe­cial­ist lawyer for insol­ven­cy and restruc­tur­ing law and has already act­ed as trustee for the solar car start-up Sono Motors and the drone man­u­fac­tur­er EMT, among oth­ers. His role is to pro­tect the inter­ests of the cred­i­tors in the pro­ceed­ings.

Klaus Roewe, Lil­i­um CEO, wel­comed the appoint­ments. He said: “With the sup­port of our appoint­ed cus­to­di­an and the restruc­tur­ing experts, we at Lil­i­um remain ful­ly focused on re-emerg­ing fol­low­ing restruc­tur­ing, with fresh invest­ment to sup­port the all-elec­tric Lil­i­um Jet’s path to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and entry into ser­vice.”

Current developments

Work at Lilium’s sub­sidiaries con­tin­ues, with the more than 1,000 employ­ees engaged in pro­gress­ing towards the next sig­nif­i­cant pro­gram mile­stone, first manned flight, hav­ing been informed on the details of con­tin­ued employ­ee pay­ment. The busi­ness has also informed affect­ed sup­pli­ers, out­lin­ing expec­ta­tions and pro­ce­dur­al steps.

The first two Lil­i­um Jets are cur­rent­ly on the final assem­bly line, with the first air­craft hav­ing recent­ly com­plet­ed the ini­tial low-volt­age pow­er-on mile­stone and due to advance short­ly into the ground test­ing phase.

The fuse­lage and wings of the third air­craft are cur­rent­ly in assem­bly at aerostruc­tures sup­pli­ers Aci­tur­ri and Aern­no­va. At the end of Octo­ber, Lil­i­um engi­neers moved a ful­ly assem­bled, con­form­ing Lil­i­um Jet air­frame into the sta­t­ic test rig for struc­tur­al test­ing, in a sig­nif­i­cant advance for the pro­gram. The struc­tur­al strength test is an essen­tial part of the test­ing plan for first manned flight and type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The busi­ness’ cur­rent order pipeline con­sists of firm orders, reser­va­tions, options, and mem­o­ran­da of under­stand­ing for more than 780 Lil­i­um Jets to oper­a­tors in the U.S., South Amer­i­ca, Europe, Asia, and the Mid­dle East.

NASDAQ delisting

Lil­i­um has been noti­fied by NASDAQ that trad­ing of the company’s shares and war­rants will be sus­pend­ed at the open­ing of busi­ness on Novem­ber 6.  Fol­low­ing trad­ing sus­pen­sion, the Company’s ordi­nary shares may com­mence trad­ing over-the-counter, which may result in sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er trad­ing vol­umes and could fur­ther depress the share price.

Lil­i­um N.V.’s Board of Direc­tors autho­rized Lilium’s list­ed enti­ty yes­ter­day (Mon­day), the Nether­lands-reg­is­tered pub­lic lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny (naam­loze ven­nootschap) to file for insol­ven­cy.