Vertical Aerospace’s Board to welcome John Martin as its new CFO from next month

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has strength­ened its exec­u­tive lead­er­ship team with the appoint­ment of John Mar­tin as Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer (CFO).

John joins the com­pa­ny after a suc­cess­ful 30-year career in senior oper­a­tional and finan­cial man­age­ment roles of large, inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­es and will take up his new role on Feb­ru­ary 20th.

His sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in strate­gic devel­op­ment and dri­ving excel­lence in oper­a­tional per­for­mance will allow him to pro­vide unique sup­port for Vertical’s Founder & CEO, Stephen Fitz­patrick, in scal­ing the com­pa­ny through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion.

The announce­ment fol­lows the res­ig­na­tion of Vin­ny Casey as Vertical’s CFO, who will remain on the com­pa­ny’s Board as a non-exec­u­tive direc­tor but returns to OVO Ener­gy, the inde­pen­dent UK ener­gy sup­pli­er also found­ed by Fitz­patrick.

Michael Cer­ven­ka has stepped down from the Board, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, and has a new role in the busi­ness as Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer. He will be focused on build­ing Vertical’s future engi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy pipelines, as well as con­tin­u­ing to lead strate­gic sup­ply chain part­ner activ­i­ties.

Fitz­patrick said: “I am delight­ed to wel­come John to Ver­ti­cal Aero­space. His expe­ri­ence lead­ing pub­lic com­pa­nies will be crit­i­cal as we scale Ver­ti­cal both to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion.

“John’s appoint­ment fur­ther strength­ens Vertical’s exec­u­tive team to deliv­er the VX4 into entry into ser­vice and beyond. I would also like to thank Vin­ny Casey for his com­mit­ment to Ver­ti­cal and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing work­ing with him on the Ver­ti­cal Board.”

Before join­ing Ver­ti­cal, John con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to build­ing prof­itabil­i­ty and gen­er­at­ing share­hold­er val­ue for sev­er­al promi­nent busi­ness­es, help­ing trans­form them into high-growth mar­ket lead­ers, includ­ing FTSE 100 Fer­gu­son plc (for­mer­ly Wolse­ley plc), FTSE 250 Hays plc and the pri­vate Trav­elex Group.

He is a Char­tered Accoun­tant and ear­li­er in his career was Group Con­troller of The Sta­tion­ary Office Group upon its pri­vati­sa­tion in 1996, hav­ing ear­li­er spent nine years at Arthur Ander­sen. John also served briefly as Chair of Coun­try­side Prop­er­ties plc. John cur­rent­ly serves as an inde­pen­dent non-exec­u­tive direc­tor of Oca­do Group plc, a mar­ket lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy and robot­ics busi­ness, and mem­ber of the FTSE 100.

Com­ment­ing on his appoint­ment, John said: “I am delight­ed to be join­ing such an inno­v­a­tive and excit­ing com­pa­ny at this time. The expe­ri­ence that Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has brought to the chal­lenge of zero oper­at­ing emis­sions urban air mobil­i­ty is tru­ly remark­able and I am real­ly look­ing for­ward to sup­port­ing this world-class team in achiev­ing its mis­sion and build­ing the future of sus­tain­able avi­a­tion.”

Ear­li­er this month, Ver­ti­cal announced that Japan­ese con­glom­er­ate Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion had become its first cus­tomer in Asia to make a pre-deliv­ery pay­ment for its VX4 air­craft. It has reserved deliv­ery slots for 25 of up to 200 con­di­tion­al pre-orders and the move fur­ther strength­ens Japan’s poten­tial as a launch mar­ket for Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty.