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INTERVIEW| SHAWN VICK<br />
Global Jet Capital<br />
gets down to business<br />
Anthony Harrington talks to Shawn Vick, Executive Board Chairman of Global Jet Capital<br />
In October 2014 Global Jet Capital<br />
launched at NBAA, with the express aim<br />
of helping prospective jet owners fi nance<br />
new and pre-owned large-cabin, longrange<br />
jets. Occupying a space formerly inhabited<br />
by big international banks, Global<br />
Jet Capital is a unique and massive new entrant<br />
to the business jet fi nancing market. It is backed<br />
by three global investment fi rms, GSO Capital<br />
Partners (a Blackstone company), The Carlyle<br />
Group, and AE Industrial Partners. Together,<br />
these three have provided a funding capability in<br />
excess of $2 billion. This has enabled Global Jet<br />
Capital to hit the ground running and Executive<br />
Board Chairman, Shawn Vick, reckons that the<br />
company is well on the way to building a very<br />
signifi cant book of business.<br />
Vick, who also holds the position of General<br />
Partner at AE Industrial Partners, says that Global<br />
Jet Capital is already involved in advanced funding<br />
discussions on a number of projects. The aircraft<br />
under discussion include Gulfstream G650s,<br />
Challenger 605s, an ACJ and a Falcon 7x.<br />
The company’s management team has an impressive<br />
pedigree in the business aviation space.<br />
Vick has had leadership roles in three airframe<br />
OEMs, most recently – along with fellow executive<br />
board member, Bill Boisture – at Hawker<br />
Beechcraft, where Boisture was the CEO. David<br />
Rowe, the third executive board member, is a former<br />
Gulfstream vice president and the founder<br />
and managing partner of AE Industrial Partners,<br />
which specialises in investing in aerospace and<br />
power generation companies.<br />
Vick is very satisifi ed with the progress made<br />
since the launch. “We’ve seen very positive results<br />
across maybe three or four different dimensions.<br />
The brand awareness that we have been<br />
able to generate in the market since NBAA 2014<br />
has been very pleasing. Aimee Talbert Nardini<br />
joined our team as Director of Marketing and has<br />
done a great job in getting our brand out there<br />
on a global scale. We are way ahead of what we<br />
expected as far as visits to our web site are concerned.<br />
Our teams have travelled to every continent,<br />
pursuing business, and we have a number<br />
of very signifi cant deals in the process of being<br />
underwritten and in the pipeline,” he confi rms.<br />
Turning to the thinking that inspired the<br />
launch of Global Jet Capital, Vick explains that the<br />
original concept for the company’s business model<br />
came out of four-way conversations between<br />
Global Jet Capital managing director Claude<br />
Franco, and the three executive board members,<br />
around the time of the 2008 fi nancial crisis. “We<br />
started evaluating the possibility of launching an<br />
aircraft financing business that would specialise<br />
in operating and finance leases for large -cabin<br />
private aircraft. The idea, from the outset, was not<br />
just to provide leasing solutions but also lending<br />
products such as progress payment financing and<br />
senior and junior loans for private aircraft. We saw<br />
an opportunity to move into lines of business that<br />
the traditional global banks, under pressure from<br />
the regulators, were moving out of as they sought<br />
to shrink their loan books.” By 2014, with demand<br />
for private aircraft showing modest recovery, the<br />
timing seemed right.<br />
“If you take away the unusual peak in demand<br />
private aviation saw just before the fi -<br />
nancial crash of 2008, and you also remove<br />
the steep drop in demand caused by the crash,<br />
and then look at the way global sales of new<br />
aircraft have progressed over the last decade<br />
and a half, we are pretty much back on track.<br />
We are nowhere near the peak of 2007 but on<br />
a normalised curve; sales are back to normal or<br />
near normal and there is plenty of business out<br />
there to be done. We will continue to be prudent<br />
with our sponsors’ capital but the quality of our<br />
interaction with the market has been excellent,”<br />
Vick comments.<br />
There are some adverse geopolitical factors<br />
at present, including turmoil in parts of the<br />
Middle East and the slowdown in the Chinese<br />
economy, along with the anti-corruption drive<br />
by the Chinese government. But North America,<br />
Europe and Latin America are generating<br />
58 International | Autumn 2015
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