Today, Avolon is a company that's just
over eight years old so, we started
the company in 2010. We were the largest
funded startup in the world, actually,
in any sector. We raised 750 million
dollars of equity, and we started at the
right time and I think in any business timing is critical.
We had a superb team and I call it the trilogy of
events. So, if we fast forward to 2018,
where we are right now, Avolon is a third
largest lessor in the world we have a
portfolio of aircraft almost 900
airplanes. We have the youngest fleet of
airplanes in the world market. Our
balance sheet at the middle of the year
in June 30 had over 5.7 billion dollars
of liquidity. We have an amazing team of
people all over the world with 250 staff,
broadly speaking 50/50 male/female we're
very big on diversity, inclusion,
belonging. So, we work very hard with our
people on their own personal development
as well as their professional development.
There's three reasons why Ireland is the
number one player and we're the number
one player by some distance.
The first is legacy. This industry is
still very young, aircraft leasing, and
the founder, in many ways, was Dr. Tony
Ryan who created a company called GPA,
he's also the founder Ryanair, and GPA
established in 1975 which is just over
fifty years ago and that was the genesis
of aircraft leasing. Coupled with that, if
you like, is a very supportive
withholding tax treaty network all over
the world that the Irish government was
quite forward-thinking in the 60s, 70s
and 80s putting this in place and that's
a unique characteristic of Ireland in
many respects but, probably, the special
sauce, as we call it, is the access to the
talent, to the people. There is a deep pool of
talent in Ireland of individuals who
have deep experience, multi-cycle
experience in the aircraft leasing space.
So, it's a combination of all three. When
you put it together the facts are that
nine of the top ten lessors in the world
are based here. Avolon is number three in
the world today and the future is bright
unquestionably for us.
I've been lucky enough to build several
businesses over my career and if I'm to
write down the most important thing are
the most important ingredient for
success in building a company it's to
get the culture of that company right
from the start, have it very clearly
defined, have it very clearly understood,
and have a set of behaviors that are
associated with the culture. So, the
Avolon culture is captured under the
acronym T.R.I.B.E.
It stands for transparency, so what you see is what
you get, respect for oneself or one's
colleagues, for society.
Insightfulness. I want you to have an
independent perspective, the
what if, how about idea. Bravery.
It takes a lot of bravery to start a
company but it takes even more bravery
to keep a company to be continuing to be
good and to be great
so bravery is really important, take that
hard decision. And finally, the "e", ebullience,
or, in Ireland, we'd say "the craic". Really
important part of our culture and and we
kind of describe it as saying we take
what we do really seriously but we just
don't take ourselves seriously, and I
think just that little special sauce
there is what makes us unique.
Well, we're going to continue to grow. One
of the important features of this
business is you can lock in growth for
many years into the future
and what that means is that we have in
place with Boeing and Airbus very
significant orders of aircraft so we
know with high degree of precision
how many aircraft will take delivery of
next year, the year after, and the year
after and actually when you sum it all
up it's about twenty billion dollars of
locked in capex over the next five years.
So, a lot of growth ahead for this
business I'm very excited about the
future of the company and, of course, we'll
continue to bring in young talent into
this company, not just Irish people, but from
all over the world who want to work in
aircraft leasing in general but
specifically want to work here.