ISTAT Jetrader - Autumn 2019 - 10

PERSPECTIVES

Peter Barrett
CEO of SMBC Aviation Capital

Jetrader spoke to Peter Barrett, CEO of SMBC
Aviation Capital, about his career, the changes
he's seen over the years, and Ireland's role in the
airline and aircraft leasing industries.
Jetrader: When you began your
career, did you have any long-term
goals in the industry, or was it
something you thought you'd only be
involved in for a short time?
Peter Barrett (PB): I studied
engineering at university here in
Ireland, and then I went to work for a
company that was then called Andersen
Consulting, which is now Accenture. At
the time, GPA was a very successful
and well-known company in Ireland,
so, as a young person, I wanted to
try to get in there. I applied, did a lot
of interviews, and got a job. I had no
particular interest in aviation per se,
and I certainly didn't have any longterm goals 30 years ago when I got into
aircraft leasing. It happened by chance
and good luck.
Jetrader: What is it about aviation
that's held your attention for so long?
PB: It's an interesting business. Also,
when you get into a career, you tend
to stay in it. But it is an interesting
industry. It's global, and you deal
with many different kinds of things
from finance to geopolitics to legal
to managing people. It's a complex
industry, and it's engaging, so that's
probably the principal reason. It's also
rewarding. But, ultimately, like a lot of
things, I did reasonably well in it, and
when you're doing something, you enjoy
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it and you're moderately competent at
it, you tend to keep doing it.
Jetrader: What did the industry look
like when you started versus today?
PB: It's much bigger. There are a lot
more leasing companies and a lot more
aircrafts are leased. Aviation in general
is bigger. That's probably the principal
difference. When I started off nearly 30
years ago, aircraft leasing was a kind
of niche product of an entrepreneurial
industry that was finding its feet.
Today, 40%+ of airplanes are leased,
and it's the financing tool of choice for
most airlines and a dominant product
in aircraft financing. It's very much a
mainstream product. Businesses are
now generally owned by big financial
institutions. They're much bigger
than they were. They're much more
structured and institutional in their
nature. The other thing that strikes
me - I was chatting to my kids
recently about this - is when I started
doing this, there was no email, there
were no mobile phones and there was
no internet. Everything was done by
telephone and fax. When you were
traveling in the early '90s, you arrived
at a hotel somewhere in the world
and there were a bunch of telephone
messages and a bunch of faxes waiting
for you. That's how you communicated.
When I think about the world now, that
ISTAT Jetrader - Autumn 2019

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