Jetrader - January/February 2009 - (Page 7) Q&A President, Transportation Finance CIT Group, Inc. J Photo by: Cubbie_n_Vegas/fl ickr.com Interview conducted by Marco Sterk, The Longbow Group, LLC etrader: How did you get involved in the aviation industry? Jeff Knittel: My career started with my love of aviation and culminated in me going to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and there I met more people who shared my passion for aviation. From there I had the opportunity to join Cessna Finance Corporation and spent a few years there really getting an understanding of the corporate air side of the business. After that, I had the opportunity to move on to a leasing company, and leasing at that point in time in aviation was not all that well known. This was the early ‘80s, and I joined a company called Manufacturers Hanover Leasing Corporation, which was the largest bank-owned leasing company in the world at that time. It had a significant aviation portfolio but hadn’t set up the necessary infrastructure to build and market that part of the business. I was hired by a gentleman named Andy La Stella, who was one of the founding members of ISTAT, and I’ve continued in aviation ever since. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of very interesting aviation professionals at a very young age, and it was a lot of fun. I got involved with ISTAT at the very beginning of my career. I was about 26 years old when ISTAT was founded, when people like Ron Anderson, Dick Spaulding, George Dutton, John Duncan, Joe Murphy, Andy La Stella and a few others got together with this idea, and how it has grown, from where it started, is pretty amazing. I don’t think anybody in 1983 would have guessed that ISTAT would have been as big as it is today, and I’ve enjoyed watching it grow. J: In your view, what differentiates CIT from other leasing companies? JK: The longevity in the industry. CIT has been in the aviation business for over 40 years, so we have been through the ups and downs. We understand what it takes to succeed and, more importantly, what it takes for our customers to succeed. We have a terrifi c team that has been here for a long time. The core of this team has been together, in many cases, for 20 years. We’ve worked together, we’ve built the company together, we built the relationships together, and that really helps us as we go out into the market today. We’ve faced the pressures of the market together through the years. When I started in ’82, the market was in a downturn, and again from ’91, to ’93, then obviously the difficulties after 9/11, and there’s a bit of pressure today, as well. Going through some of those things has helped us in our positioning of the company today. Jetrader 7 http://www.ickr.com
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