Over 70 redundancies have been made as the sale of the collapsed UK entity of EV firm Arrival has fallen apart after administrators were unable to complete a last-minute sale of the business.
In an administrator’s report from EY Parthenon, it was revealed that sales for two different parts of Arrival were in advanced negotiations with a preferential bidder selected for both.
Though the report said both deals had “significantly progressed”, with “documentation nearly complete”, the administrators were informed “at a very late stage” that neither bidder would be able to close the deal. In one case this was due to financing issues and the other was down to “governance issues due to developments in its own group”.
If the sales were completed, it would have resulted in the transfer of all employees to either bidder, under TUPE regulations, however, as the administrators have now abandoned hopes of a complete sale and are instead looking to sell-off IP and equipment, redundancies for all of the remaining staff will take effect.
The sales process was terminated due to the “severe deterioration of the electric vehicles market” and the “exhaustive sales process” that included more than 160 interested parties.
Read more: EV subscription firm Onto enters administration
The administrators will now focus on recovering the $110.5m (£87.01m) owed to secured creditors. So far, £206,200 has been made from the sale of non-core assets since the administration process began in over a year ago.
A further £368,400 is due to be received this month, just under £430,000 has been received from debtor recoveries and negotiations are underway to recover amounts due from Elements UK – of which £700,000 has been received.
Founded in 2015 by Russian billionaire Denis Sverdlov, Arrival developed an EV production system using robotically-operated micro-factories.
After raising hundreds of millions of pounds, the company was listed on the Nasdaq in 2021 via a SPAC deal with CIIG Merger. At its peak the firm was worth $13bn. A second SPAC merger that would have seen the firm acquired by Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp fell apart in 2023.
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