Shareholders in the troubled UK-based Farnborough-Aircraft.com fast air-taxi project will be asked to vote on bids by two potential new companies offering to bail out the organisation and restructure it. The bids are to be presented at an extraordinary general meeting on 8 July.
One of the bidders, Farnborough Aircraft 2002, plans to satisfy creditors, restructure the company and raise additional funds without flotation, and promises existing shareholders their shares will not be diluted to less than 6% of the company's ultimate value.
The other bid is fielded by businessman and Farnborough Aircraft shareholder Geoffrey Galley who wants to raise capital and manage the company along more traditional corporate lines than project founder Richard Noble. Part of Galley's plan is that Noble would no longer have a managerial role in his proposed Farnborough Aircraft Corporation, while Farnborough Aircraft 2002 would retain Noble as project director. Galley promises existing shareholders that "whatever funding I get in, shareholders would retain 5% of the value of the company".
Both groups have fundamentally the same vision for the company's single-turboprop aircraft, the Farnborough F1, and the nature of its market, but they differ on cost and how it should be done. Shareholders have been warned by both parties, however, that the project will be faced with administration unless it is restructured.
Source: Flight International
