Adam Aircraft Industries Inc., the Colorado-based maker of lightweight passenger planes, has filed to liquidate in bankruptcy protection after suspending operations last week.
The closely held company listed debt of $50 million to $100 million and assets of less than $10 million on a voluntary Chapter 7 petition filed Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Denver. Adam Aircraft was unable to secure more financing from its lender, according to a Feb. 11 statement on its Web site.
The lender was New York-based Morgan Stanley, said M. Frances Cetrulo, Adam Aircraft's lawyer.
"They had borrowed a substantial amount, and the lenders chose not to continue lending," Cetrulo said Tuesday in an interview. "There will likely be a sale of assets."
The company in mid-January shut down is operations in Ogden, expecting the layoff of 50 workers to last a few months but still confident it could fulfill its long-term plans to employ more than 1,250 people there. At the same time it laid off 80 workers in Pueblo, Colo., and about 170 in the Denver area, leaving it with about 500 workers.
The company's facilities at the south end of Ogden-Hinckley Airport were eventually be the production center for the A500 aircraft, a twin-propeller plane, and the A700, a jet version of the A500 — producing 1,000 planes over a next decade, with most of them coming from the Ogden plant.
Adam Aircraft, based in Englewood, Colo., had federal government certification to produce the A500 and was hoping to get certification for the A700 this year. The company said in mid-January it was hoping to raise $75 million to $100 million.
The company had been approved for financial incentives by the state of Utah and the Ogden Redevelopment Agency to boost employment in Ogden. In December, the company said that it would add about 600 jobs in Ogden over the next two years and eventually have 1,255 workers over the next 15 years.
The Utah incentives are from the Governor's Office of Economic Development Board, which reworked an earlier financial incentive to lure Adam Aircraft jobs to Utah, and the Ogden RDA. The state incentive was in the form of a tax rebate, projected at up to $35.26 million over 15 years. The RDA had committed an estimated $1.2 million in tax increments over 14 years.
The tax-rebate incentives now will not be given, because they are paid out only after companies create the promised high-paying jobs or meet other milestones.
Former Goldman, Sachs & Co. partner Rick Adam started the company in 1998. Adam also founded New Era of Networks Inc., an Englewood-based supplier of Internet software and services acquired by Sybase Inc.
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com