The UK business of electric vehicle company Arrival owes more than £1.2bn across unpaid tax, wages, suppliers, and money owed to shareholders, administrator documents show.
The UK arm of the formerly Nasdaq-listed EV developer entered administration in February after it was unable to secure a buyer. It followed a collapsed SPAC merger deal last year.
According to a statement of affairs from administrator EY, Arrival UK owes over £1bn to shareholders, nearly £36m to secured creditors not covered by the value of its assets, and £103m to unsecured creditors.
The Banbury-based company was valued at £9bn just three years ago.
Arrival’s unsecured creditor debt includes £19m to suppliers, including over £1m to AWS, £103,040 to rival provider Google Cloud and £315 to London-based speciality coffee provider Grind.
The company also owes over £10m to HMRC, £73.7m in intercompany debt, £373,142 in unpaid salary and holiday leave and £102,456 in pension responsibilities.
The estimated value available if it were to sell its primary assets – including IP, patents, machinery and software – is £50.7m. The majority of that – £50m – is the estimated value of its IP.
Those assets are ringfenced to repay secured creditors that have a fixed floating charge. However, there is still a shortfall of over £36m to repay those creditors.
Other assets, including employee loans and tax credits, were valued at just under £210m. However, the administrator has written down the value of these to just £2.8m.
Most of that £2.8m would be used to pay the more than £373,000 owed to staff in unpaid salaries, along with £1.6m to HMRC.
Investors, who are owed more than £1bn, are last in line in the event of Arrival’s assets being sold off.
UKTN has contacted EY for comment.
Arrival was founded in 2015 by Russian billionaire Deni Sverdlov. The company aimed to streamline the vehicle production process through robotically operated micro-factories.
The company had consistent burn rate issues since its New York IPO in 2021. Arrival faced heavy losses in the run-up to its administration, with a last-ditch £40m bridge loan from existing investors not being enough to save it.
Additional reporting by Robert Scammell.
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