Feature: Riding the private equity wave

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Private equity has discovered aircraft leasing, with more than $3 billion worth of investments set to close in 2010, reports Alasdair Whyte.
There is a new race in operating leasing. Forget ILFC versus Gecas. Forget Boullioun and Awas fighting to be the third largest in the late 1990s. Now the focus is on two start-ups: Avolon, led by Domnhal Slattery and Denis Nayden, and Steven Udvar-Hazy and John Plueger Air Lease Corporation.
On May 20 Avolon announced that it had raised $1.4 billion in equity and $615 million in debt, making it the best-ever capitalized start-up lessor. This is a landmark deal in every sense of the word.
The significance of this deal and the three-way joint venture is truly innovative. It is also great for the industry that it has such a significant well funded new company at this stage in the market, says Rob Murphy, the partner at Freshfields who advised Avolon, and who believes that this is among the defining transactions of his career....

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