Coming from a global leader in aviation intelligence, Aviation Exchange helps financiers navigate their way through the increasingly fragmented US$100 billion global aircraft transaction market.
Aviation Exchange claims to be the first ever aircraft market intelligence service so comprehensive as to bring all transactional details together in one place. It provides a dynamic, visual hub of information around the profile of every company, lessor, bank, and airline that does deals in aviation finance.
Aviation Exchange details all the key metrics in a given deal, including deal status, structure, value, and the relationships between all parties – through comprehensive graphs, tables and analysis – brought together on a single screen. Users of the new service can make immediate contact with the parties involved in the transaction, by clicking straight through to their LinkedIn profiles and groups.
The service also offers original investigative news reports associated with a given transaction, generated by the reporters and analysts comprising the Aviation Exchange team. The team tracks deals from rumour through to completion, uncovering new market information unreported elsewhere.
Ascend’s Head of Risk Advisory, Paul Sheridan, says aircraft finance has been a casualty of the banking crisis, becoming disjointed, as many major aircraft finance banks – the likes of RBS, HBOS, WestLB, LBBW and HSH Nordbank – have stopped lending in the sector.
“In exchange for government funding packages, they have been forced to switch their lending focus away from the global to the local,” Sheridan says.
“As a truly global industry, aircraft finance needs banks with global ambitions and there aren’t many of these left. Regional banks, especially in China and other parts of Asia, have entered the market but their purely regional focus has left the market more fragmented than ever.
“The impact has been profound; up until 2008 the aircraft finance market was easy to track because it was dominated by a relatively small number of banks with large appetites to lend money. Now, airlines and lessors need to look hard for lenders for their aircraft, particularly if the aircraft are outside of the mainstream 737 and A320 families or are over five years of age.”
Ascend has recognised that what the sector needs now is a new guide, connected to reliable deal benchmarking and insight, to generate consistency and confidence in the new economic climate. Aviation Exchange is designed to stimulate deal making again in the sector.
“Financiers are watching closely to see what new trends will emerge in aircraft lending both from banks and from the capital markets,” says Sheridan. “Up to now there has been no place to go to analyse the aircraft finance market fully.”
In addition to deal-specific stories, the news service includes features, opinion pieces and news on broader topics affecting the aviation industry.
