The number of deals being done around the Airline Economics Growth Frontiers Hong Kong event this week has been truly phenomenal. Not all of these are public but the main stories have been the emergence of Cheung Kong as an aircraft lessor with its purchase of up to 60 aircraft in four deals that were announced yesterday (see APAC news section below). The Apollo asset backed securitisation (ABS) launched today and we will track to see how that goes. ICBC Leasing is still in the market with its asset backed notes issuance we reported on earlier this week, with that deal expected to fly. It has been a relatively quiet period for capital market deals with a blip in the market during September and October but that is all set to change with at least four big ABS deals due to come to market before the end of the year and some other interesting issuances in the bond markets also coming soon. Speakers on stage at the Growth Frontiers event were bullish about 2015, with $35bn of debt and equity capital markets deals estimated.
This week Virgin America finally launched its IPO setting price talk around $21 and $24. The offering is valued at around $300 million that excludes a private placement of shares with PAR Investment Partners, which has agreed to buy about $52.1 million of the shares for about 96% of their IPO price. The entire deal gives the company a market capitalization of $972 million.
Spring Airlines has come out with its plans to follow other airlines plans to launch an aircraft leasing business taking advantage of registering the new company in Shanghai’s free-trade zone. Speaking to Bloomberg at the Growth Frontiers event, Tian Chao, Spring’s finance manager, said that regulatory approval could come by the end of the year.
“We have been in talks with other possible clients in the mainland and overseas, but that’s not an immediate priority,” Tian said. “The main purpose is to help our company reduce costs.”