Netherlands based Spyker car
company has been declared bankrupt. On December 18, 2014, the District Court of
Midden-Nederland, at the request of the administrator, converted the moratorium
of payment, granted to Spyker N.V. and its wholly owned subsidiaries Spyker
Automobielen B.V. and Spyker Events & Branding B.V. (collectively “Spyker”
or the “Company”) on December 2nd, last, to bankruptcy.
In a press release, the company
stated that the cause for this conversion was that the committed bridge funding
did unfortunately not reach the company in time. The administrator will
continue his work but now as receiver.
Victor R. Muller, Founder and
Chief Executive Officer said: “None of the ambitions we had when we founded
Spyker 15 years ago, has vanished as a result of today’s events. In 2000 we set
out to establish a super sports car business from scratch with a global
distribution and we achieved that. Over the years we undertook some daring
ventures that left their marks on the company which in turn contributed to
today’s demise”.
However, he said that “this is
not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the
end of the beginning” to quote Winston Churchill.
“I will relentlessly endeavour
to resurrect Spyker as soon as practically possible and, assuming we will be
successful, pursue our goal to merge with a high performance electric aircraft
manufacturer and develop revolutionary electric Spykers with disruptive
sustainable technology.
“This is the moment to express
my gratitude to our customers, dealers, suppliers and of course our employees
and Board. Their loyalty and support was vital to build the brand over the past
decade and a half. They can count on us continuing to live by the Spyker axiom
“Nulla Tenaci Invia est Via” (Latin for “For the tenacious no road is impassible”),”
he stated in the release.
It may be recalled that the
company had filed a voluntary petition on December 2, 2014 for financial
restructuring in an effort to address certain short-term operational and
liquidity challenges. The same court had granted Spyker’s voluntary petition
for temporary moratorium of payment (“surseance van betaling”), the Dutch
equivalent of the American Chapter 11 proceedings.
Motown India had in an
exclusive report in 2013 reported that Spyker had plans to enter the Indian
market with its cars. Later this magazine reported the company plans to bring
in their cars into India in 2014. Now this too will have to wait till the company
bounces back into good financial health.