Vertical Aerospace Appoints Former FLIR CEO Andrew Teich to Board

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed Andrew Teich, the for­mer chief exec­u­tive of defence tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny FLIR Sys­tems, to its board of direc­tors as the UK eVTOL devel­op­er con­tin­ues prepa­ra­tions for air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

The appoint­ment, effec­tive 2 Novem­ber, adds more than 40 years of tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness expe­ri­ence to Vertical’s board. Teich spent near­ly two decades in senior posi­tions at FLIR, serv­ing as pres­i­dent and CEO between 2013 and 2017. Dur­ing his tenure, the com­pa­ny expand­ed from a mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of approx­i­mate­ly $60 mil­lion to more than $6 bil­lion, accord­ing to Ver­ti­cal.

His expe­ri­ence includes advanced sens­ing and imag­ing sys­tems, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, autonomous tech­nolo­gies and unmanned air­craft. He is also a named inven­tor on more than 50 patents and has been involved in the acqui­si­tion and inte­gra­tion of more than 35 tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es.

Teich cur­rent­ly chairs the boards of Sen­sa­ta Tech­nolo­gies and Resideo Tech­nolo­gies, and acts as a con­sul­tant to the US Depart­ment of War. Ver­ti­cal said his back­ground in defence pro­grammes and dual-use tech­nolo­gies would be rel­e­vant as it explores appli­ca­tions for its air­craft and propul­sion sys­tems beyond civ­il pas­sen­ger trans­port.

He joins a board that has recent­ly under­gone sev­er­al senior appoint­ments. These include Fab­rice Brégi­er, the for­mer chief exec­u­tive of Air­bus Com­mer­cial Air­craft, as chair; Clyde Wolt­man, pre­vi­ous­ly CEO of Leonar­do Heli­copters US; and Marc Fontaine, a for­mer Air­bus exec­u­tive who is now CEO of Hels­ing France.

The appoint­ments come as Ver­ti­cal advances devel­op­ment of its Valo elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing air­craft, with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and even­tu­al com­mer­cial oper­a­tions among its stat­ed pri­or­i­ties. The com­pa­ny is also devel­op­ing hybrid-elec­tric and defence-relat­ed appli­ca­tions.

Ver­ti­cal said Teich would work with the board and man­age­ment team on iden­ti­fy­ing strate­gic and finan­cial part­ners. The com­pa­ny appoint­ed Jef­feries LLC as finan­cial advis­er in Sep­tem­ber to sup­port a review of strate­gic alter­na­tives, includ­ing poten­tial part­ner­ships to fund and advance its next devel­op­ment phase.

Teich said his imme­di­ate focus would be sup­port­ing the search for part­ners to help the com­pa­ny progress through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and towards com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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