Jetrader - July/August 2009 - 10

GLOBAL COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT LEASING COMPANY J: What do you think you would be selling today if it wasn’t airplanes? Do you have other industry interests besides aviation? JL: You know, I really like airplanes, but if the question was ‘if it wasn’t airliners…’ Well, I still like small aircraft. I noticed today in our press clippings that some fund out of Thailand bought Piper Aircraft. I was going to try to ﬁnd some news on that, because I like the small aircraft, private aircraft market. So, I’d probably be selling Pipers or Gulfstreams or something like that. Outside of aviation, I do like sailing, though. J: What last big career goal or goals have you set for yourself before moving on into retirement from Airbus, assuming you would retire at all? JL: I think what we have to do is get through this cycle right now. I turn 60 next year, and in France 60 is a typical retirement age, so a lot of people ask me ‘are you retiring next year, or are you going to stay around awhile longer?’ At this particular juncture, I think I want to stay through this cycle to make sure that we’re back on the other side, because I do have a lot of experience in previous cycles here, having gone through this many times before. I am in my fourth cycle, which is why I know that, unlike some others in our industry, the world isn’t coming to an end, and that aviation will survive; the airlines will survive. We will have a rough period, but we’ve had rough periods in the past, and we come out of it much stronger. J: In your opinion, what should ISTAT put on the agenda as a main discussion topic for upcoming conferences? JL: I think [ISTAT] hit the nail on the head with aircraft appraisal, aircraft ﬁnance, looking at different structures that we as an industry could bring to the marketplace. An awful lot of money got lost, as we all know, in shopping centers in Des Moines, Iowa, or in subprime mortgages, in Ohio and Louisiana. That money got burned, and I think those same investors will be looking for safer investments. We’ve got a challenge to show people that airplanes are, in fact, a very safe investment—they’re standardized. When you make a bet in real estate, you’re betting on a region of the world, you’re betting on a subpart of that region of the world by picking a city or state in the U.S or North Africa or the Middle East. Then, you’re picking an architect and builder, and you’re rolling the dice on whether or not 20 years from now that area will have developed as you hoped it would. If you bet on airplanes, you’re betting on a very standard product with two manufacturers producing these aircraft. If you bet wrong on the airline or region and they go belly up, you take your investment, and within 24 hours it’s in another part of the world. Residual values are a lot higher in our equipment than they are, oftentimes, in subprime mortgages and housing development and shopping centers; I think ISTAT could be very useful in trying to help get that message out. We have, I noticed, a thousand people coming to these big [ISTAT] conferences, and many of them are clearly investors. We need to look at how to get the message out about what a good investment airplanes really are. For all your operating lease needs contact us at info@genesislease.com 4450 Atlantic Avenue, Westpark, Shannon, Co. Clare, Ireland. Tel +353 61 233 300 www.genesislease.com 10 The ofﬁ 417918_Genesis.indd 1cial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading 4/24/09 8:44:20 AM

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Jetrader - July/August 2009

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