Air financing industry flying at all-time high, with little sign of crashing
Dublin — As the titans of the $140bn-a-year aircraft financing industry gathered in Dublin this week to celebrate an unprecedented boom, a few were casting a cold eye on mistakes of the past — and whether they could happen again. Ireland owes its dominance of global aircraft finance to the rise and spectacular collapse in 1992 of industry pioneer Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), which demonstrated both the risks and returns possible from financing airplanes. The former GPA executives, who now dominate the industry, were debating which of the new players and investors that have flooded in in the last five years might not have learned from those mistakes — and whether the industry had finally broken its cycle of spectacular booms and busts. The five-star venues that every year host the sector’s showcase conferences were heaving with hundreds of new investors — many from China — who have poured in to a once-obscure industry as global investors engage in a desperate search for returns. Thr...
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