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Last Minute Rescue: “New Year Cheer for Lilium as eVTOL Company Finds Investor”

What an emo­tion­al roller­coast­er ride for Ger­man-based eVTOL com­pa­ny, Lil­i­um, lead­ing up to Xmas. Just days before Christ­mas, news broke it had gone into liq­ui­da­tion. No new investor could be found. On Decem­ber 20th, the remain­ing 750 staff were told they no longer had a job. But on Christ­mas Eve, a mir­a­cle occurred. At the very last minute, the fly­ing taxi devel­op­er found an investor after all and an asset pur­chase agree­ment was signed.

Mobile Uplift Cor­po­ra­tion (MUC), a com­pa­ny set up by an expe­ri­enced con­sor­tium of investors from Europe and North Amer­i­ca, are to acquire the oper­at­ing assets of the Sub­sidiaries Lil­i­um GmbH and Lil­i­um eAir­craft GmbH. The agree­ment posi­tions the Sub­sidiaries to obtain suf­fi­cient fund­ing to restart busi­ness oper­a­tions. Pro­ceeds received from the sale will be utilised accord­ing to Ger­man Insol­ven­cy Law, with no amounts being dis­trib­uted to Lil­i­um N.V. 

Lil­i­um expects this deal to be finalised by ear­ly Jan­u­ary “sub­ject to the sat­is­fac­tion of cer­tain cus­tom­ary con­di­tions prece­dent, includ­ing open­ing of the pro­ceed­ings and con­sent of the cred­i­tors com­mit­tee,” explains a press release. “Mobile Uplift intends to employ the staff imme­di­ate­ly after open­ing of the pro­ceed­ings and clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion.” 

Lil­i­um CEO Klaus Roewe, com­ment­ed, “We are very pleased to announce the sign­ing of an invest­ment agree­ment with a very expe­ri­enced con­sor­tium of investors, which is a major break­through.” Adding, “The deal is to be finalised at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary. This will allow us to restart our busi­ness.”

electrive.com, a Ger­man media web­site, has released fur­ther news in recent days.

: The new investor con­sor­tium is to fund Lil­i­um with EUR200 mil­lion.

: The mon­ey will be used to ensure oper­a­tions are to con­tin­ue for the time being. 

: A MUC Spokesper­son is quot­ed in the Ger­man press, “We are opti­mistic, but not euphor­ic.”  

: One of the Con­sor­tium is alleged to be Cus­tom­cells, one of Lilium’s exist­ing share­hold­ers and cred­i­tors.

: Anoth­er is Ven­ture Cap­i­tal, Fifth Wall. It could become one of the biggest investors, as the ven­ture com­pa­ny has already raised USD3.2 bil­lion in cap­i­tal includ­ing an USD866 mil­lion fund for star­tups in the field of prop­er­ty tech­nol­o­gy.

: Oth­er investors are like­ly to include Max­i­m­il­ian Prinz von und zu Liecht­en­stein, CEO of LGT Group, and Niklas Zennström, Founder and ex-CEO of Skype and cur­rent Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Atom­i­co. The well-known investors 468 Cap­i­tal, Finan­cial Invest­ments SPC and Early­bird are also like­ly to have been involved in sav­ing Lil­i­um from bank­rupt­cy.

Update

On Jan­u­ary 3rd, four investors paid the first five mil­lion euros to the Mobile Uplift Cor­po­ra­tions. Specif­i­cal­ly, these are the investors Frank The­len, Chris­t­ian Reber (Wun­derlist and Pitch), Ion­iq founder and investor Jan Beck­ers and Niklas Zennström (Atom­i­co).

Frank The­len and Chris­t­ian Reber, togeth­er with Jan Beck­ers and Niklas Zennström, trans­ferred the first mon­ey to Lil­i­um on Fri­day after­noon. (Cred­it: Lilium/Lisa Kempke/Pitch)

It is said to be a con­vert­ible loan. In return, the tech investors will receive shares in MUC on Jan­u­ary 15th.

electrive.com con­cludes, “How­ev­er, it is impor­tant to note that MUC is still not offi­cial­ly the new own­er of Lil­i­um Avi­a­tion. That means investors could still pull out at the last minute. Although, this first con­crete cash flow makes the res­cue more tan­gi­ble.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://lilium.com

(News Source: https://www.electrive.com/)

(Top image: Lil­i­um eVTOL — cred­it Josh Cochran)

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