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How West was won
01 October 2005
Willis Lease Finance's first securitization took almost five years to structure, but now the model is in place the engine lessor is planning to issue every 18 months. Alasdair Whyte reports.
Read more:
securitization
Aviation
UBS; Alison Mason; Mostafiz ShahMohammed
aircraft engines
aircraft lease
The last thing Alison Mason expected a banker to be calling about in October 2001 was an idea for a new deal. But Mostafiz ShahMohammed, executive director at UBS Investment Bank, was adamant that Willis could securitize its engine portfolio despite the aviation downturn.
"To be honest I thought he was crazy," says Mason, the treasurer of engine lessor Willis Lease Finance. "We were busy enough handling problems at SR Technics and Canada 3000 – two of our largest lessees – so I told him to go ahead but guessed that I would never hear from him again. Six months later he visited us with Fortis. The deal could not have happened without Mostafiz's persistence."
ShahMohammed knew that Willis had been considering tapping the capital markets for several years. The lessor had successfully floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 1998 but had found, like many leasing companies, that its stock tended...
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