Staff at failed EV van maker Arrival face recall of £30m

EMPLOYEES who lost their jobs at the bankrupt electric vehicle company Arrival face being forced to repay millions of pounds that were used to buy shares which are now worthless.

Administrators for Arrival’s UK entities are seeking to recover £29.6m that the company lent to staff to buy share options after the electric van company went public in 2021.

Arrival’s $13bn (£10.4bn) Nasdaq listing was the biggest ever for a British company and came amid a boom in electric vehicle investment.

However, the company’s Us-listed shares subsequently crashed and its two UK divisions collapsed into administration in February.

EY has been appointed to recover funds for creditors.

A letter to creditors published last week said that the company offered loans to “a number of previous and current employees” before the administration allowed them to buy shares.

Those who held on to their shares or were prevented from selling for a period of time will make no money from their investments, but still face having to repay the loans, which are due to be paid back in 2027.

EY said that the majority of those who had borrowed money had left the business. Arrival has made the vast majority of its staff redundant in the past 18 months.

The administrators said they were “considering the recoverability of these loans and will update creditors in subsequent progress reports”.

Arrival received investment from the Korean motor giant Hyundai and also designed vehicles to be used by Royal Mail and Uber.

However, the company’s proposed vans never made it to a commercial release.

Arrival, based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, hoped to produce vehicles using a small-scale automated system heavily reliant on robots.

In 2022, the company abandoned plans to make cars in the UK and, instead, planned to start production in the US to take advantage of subsidies offered under the Biden administration but never started manufacturing.

In total, the company had raised $1.3bn from investors before collapsing. It owed almost £200m when it appointed administrators in February, including £10m to HMRC.

The administrator said that they had received a number of offers for the company or parts of the business.

It added that talks were ongoing “with the focus on seeking to complete a transaction in the coming weeks”.