Jetrader - Winter 2017 - 38

making sense for someone else. When that
starts to happen over a prolonged period,
it is inevitable that over the longer term
the industry will experience some issues.
Approximately every ten years, there's
some kind of correction or inflection point
where people reconsider their views. But
generally what you see then is that the
market comes back quite soon. There will
be dips and corrections, and during those
periods the leasing companies, banks or
airlines that may have weaker strategies
or balance sheets, will get consolidated or

absorbed into stronger entities. So, when
that point of inflection comes, it's something we look at as an opportunity. Those
moments separate the wheat from the chaff.
I know you've taught a class or two
on aircraft leasing at the Trinity
Business School in Trinity College Dublin.
Is teaching an interest of yours?
Education is important to me. As a
company one of our priorities is also to
cultivate the next generation of leaders
in aircraft leasing by sharing information

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with younger colleagues. We are also a
sponsor of Europe's first MSc in Aviation
Finance at University College Dublin and
are the only leasing company to provide
a graduate recruitment program, now in
its fifth year. Equally, I am excited about
developing the education agenda as a
recent member of the Board of Trustees
of the ISTAT Foundation.
You've been heavily involved in
ISTAT for quite a number of years.
What prompted you to join, and how have
you seen the organization change in
that time?
I attended a number of ISTAT events over
the years and saw what an excellent job they
did and how different it was. Ireland is a
big center of leasing so I was very proud
to become the first Irish board member.
One of the big things I pushed for was to
make ISTAT more international. A phrase
Jep Thornton used to use at board meetings was that we needed to 'put the I back
into ISTAT.'
I'm very happy that the membership
effectively doubled over the six years I was
on the board, and a lot of that growth was
in Europe and particularly in Asia. Working
with Steve Townend and Marilyn Gan, we
were able to take ISTAT Asia from a workshop in China in 2011 to 800 people in Hong
Kong earlier this year.
ISTAT is all about relationships and networking, and that's particularly important
in Asia where relationships are paramount
to doing business. I'd like to see more
Asians on the board of ISTAT, and I think
there is still a lot of scope to further expand
on the international side.
One of the other big things for me was
to broaden and deepen the member services
that people get from this great organization.
It's very exciting when you sit in a board
meeting and put forward ideas that actually
happen, like Doug Runte's idea of having a
chalet at the Airshow where members could
meet and network with each other.
Everything is possible with ISTAT. When
we brought up suggestions like renting the
palace at the top of the hill in Barcelona
with Flamenco dancers instead of having
a dinner event in a basement at a hotel, it
was a great success and we never looked
back. Following that, we said 'why have
sit-down dinners?' The networking dinners
where you really get to mingle have got
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Jetrader - Winter 2017

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