As chief legal officer at Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), Lesley Jones has helped steer the company through some of the leasing company’s most pivotal moments. From 2017’s AWAS acquisition, to the global pandemic, to Russia’ invasion of Ukraine and the litigation that followed, Jones’ time with DAE has been defined by challenge and change.
But her remit extends well beyond these critical periods for DAE. Her broad experience in the sector takes us on a journey encompassing risk, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), diversity and much more.
Early days
After qualifying in private legal practice, Jones started her career in the motor retail sector in the UK, before joining Barclays bank and being seconded to Dubai. She “went local” for Barclays by joining the Dubai arm of the operation before leaving the bank to join DAE in 2008 as general counsel and company secretary. She was appointed DAE’s chief legal officer in 2017 and describes her journey with DAE thus far as “fascinating”.
“We have had the global credit crisis, Covid, Russia, and, of course, the AWAS acquisition in 2017, which was when I became chief legal officer, so it’s been challenging at times, but fascinating.”
Russia
Of the challenges Jones has faced to date with DAE, perhaps Russia has proven the most significant challenge after Jones found herself dealing with the fallout from the 2022 Russia sanctions, which saw over 400 Western aircraft stranded in Russia after Western governments banned leasing and servicing aircraft to Russian airlines in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The impact of this for DAE was, and still is, litigation that stemmed from related insurance claims.
Jones tells Airline Economics that trying to figure out the sanctions when they were first applied was a challenge, but dealing with the ensuing litigation is where the frustration really took hold.
“Making the insurance claims that were then denied is what resulted in litigation, which was frustrating,” she explains. “It takes a lot of time to manage, plus you've got the impact of significant legal fees as well. So while from a legal perspective it’s quite a fascinating case, it would be preferable if we didn't have quite so much involved in it. And I'm sure if you spoke to any of the lessors, they would feel the same.”
With many cases still ongoing, Jones notes that DAE still has team members working on litigation running through the UK court system on a day-to -day basis. Even so, she’s pragmatic about the limits of what could have been done differently from DAE’s perspective. She notes that DAE has sanctions wording in its documentation, which is “fairly standard” across the industry, she says.
“It's such a global business that we always have to be mindful of what sanctions are applicable, and it's very important to us to ensure that we comply. But I don't think that there's very much that could have been done from the lessor perspective, and I don’t know that there’s anything that we could have done differently,” she says.
Risk factor
With the Russia experience still very much front of mind, along with ongoing geopolitical challenges to navigate, the aviation leasing industry is no stranger to managing financial risk. Jones notes that DAE’s risk team is acutely aware of the impact external events may have on a transaction. That said, this doesn’t mean that such events automatically lead to a risk averse outlook.
“I wouldn’t say that we are risk averse,” she says. “Obviously we have a robust risk team that will look at different transactions, and they are always mindful of different geo and political issues that arise. Issues are monitored on an ongoing basis, and the team has a pretty good handle on the risks in any particular jurisdiction. With this insight in mind, we can then assess from a business perspective whether a particular deal makes sense to us or not.”
She notes that from a legal perspective, key risk aspects to monitor are ensuring the right contractual provisions are in initial documentation, along with being able to understand what the optionality is to repossess an aircraft should it be necessary. She adds that once a deal has been struck, the risk team ensures ongoing monitoring throughout the life of the lease transaction in order to manage any shifts that might occur.
Meanwhile, an area that has become increasingly important for lessors is the credit risk of an airline. Jones notes that, along with jurisdiction considerations, credit also plays a role when assessing a potential deal.
“Credit is really important, but it fluctuates with jurisdiction in terms of importance, because when it comes to jurisdiction, different areas are going to have different political issues at different times. And I think that's something that you're always mindful of.”
When it comes to managing different jurisdictions more broadly, Jones notes that different jurisdictions bring different challenges. She points out that the Cape Town Convention is open to interpretation depending on where jurisdictions are in their leasing journey, which can add to the challenge.
“It can take time for applicable rules and regulations to bed in and for people to understand the coverage,” she explains. “The framework evolves as well with an evolving jurisdiction.”
With this in mind, Jones notes that while Cape Town is helpful, it doesn’t resolve all issues with regard to repossessions or understanding what's going to happen in a particular dispute situation, nor is it a standalone silver bullet for the industry.
“Cape Town hasn't always been interpreted as we would all have expected. I think there is more work to do,” she says. “But I think it's just one of the factors; I don't think Cape Town is a fix for all problems, and it's interpreted differently in different countries and jurisdictions at different places in their Cape Town journey.”
With all this said, Jones is confident about the current state of the market, despite the backdrop of some notable bankruptcies.
“I think those bankruptcy cases are airline specific, and I think demand is generally pretty robust around the world, with growth in most areas from a passenger travel perspective,” she says. “With this in mind, I think it’s more that there are pockets of challenges, and that’s not necessarily something that we haven’t seen before, where particular airlines need to reset.”
Elsewhere, and like everyone else in the industry, DAE is not immune to the supply chain issues happening at the moment. Jones notes that the situation is having a significant impact on the industry and that, like many, DAE has been impacted directly. However, she also offers a positive aspect to the delays, pointing out that if demand is high and new aircraft are not coming on stream, that opens up the possibility for a more positive impact with regard to the buy-side, redeploying, and secondary market trading.
“When deliveries get pushed out, it is obviously challenging for us and the airlines,” she says. “That said, whilst it does impact our growth on an immediate timeline perspective, it can also assist from a pricing tension in the secondary market.”
M&A
Jones also spends her time navigating M&A activity for DAE. She notes that the lessor considers a large number of potential M&A projects and is “very disciplined” with which projects it chooses to engage in more detail with. In January 2025, DAE signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of Nordic Aviation Capital (NAC). On a pro forma basis, DAE Capital's fleet will comprise of around 750 owned, managed, and committed aircraft with a total value of around $22bn on lease to around 170 airline customers in approximately 70 countries.
In its latest earnings call at the end of April, DAE confirmed that it has received the required antitrust clearances and said that the NAC acquisition was scheduled to close at some point in May.
Jones explains that M&A is a long process with two key elements—the initial part of the process, which involves the negotiation of what parts of the business will be acquired, along with the associated terms and pricing, followed by the second part of the process—the acquisition itself and the integration.
Questions around where people will be based, whether people have to be moved around, and any different terms of employment must be considered. In addition, Jones notes that there may be leasehold premises, along with asset contract, supplier contracts, and so on that need to be factored in.
From her legal perspective, Jones says that challenges can differ widely depending on whether the acquired entity is a platform or an asset.
“If it's an asset acquisition, there are processes that you need to go through to bring those particular assets into your systems. But if it's more of a platform acquisition, then you’ve also got the nuances of dealing with people and organisations that may have differences from a cultural perspective, different systems to integrate, and different locations.”
Diversity, Dubai and DAE
Dubai is described by Jones as “a great place to be”, which means that when it comes to attracting international aviation talent, being based in Dubai offers DAE a number of advantages owing to it being a “highly multicultural city” with notable diversity. This, Jones says, means that when people arrive from across the globe, “it's relatively straightforward for them to find a group that they have an alignment with, whether it's people from their own country or people that have got similar interests”.
She notes that because Dubai is an evolving community, it offers a number of opportunities for people to get involved, especially those who are willing to embrace a new culture.
“For people who are open enough to make a move [to a new country] to start with, then it's a case of embracing the differences,” she explains. “There are differences to being here versus somewhere in Europe, for example, but it's about appreciating the differences.”
With respect to diversity in the workplace, Jones notes that interestingly, DAE does not have diversity-specific training, yet it has always had “very strong” diversity figures. She describes this as a “true mark of success” for the firm and its diversity endeavours.
“Our leadership team is 45 percent female, and if you look at the nationalities we have in our leadership, we have people from seven different countries in that team,” she tells Airline Economics. “If you look at the business as a whole, we have around 27 different nationalities, so diversity is something that we've always embraced and lived.”
She attributes this to the attitude of DAE leadership, noting that the firm has always seen diversity as a given, rather than a concerted effort.
In fact, Jones thinks not so much about diversity, but about awareness of the industry more broadly, noting that a challenge for the sector is that when speaking to young people—men and women—they don’t necessarily know what opportunities there are in the aviation industry.
“They may well know they could be a pilot, they could be an engineer, and so on, but they won't necessarily know about aircraft leasing, and I think that that can be one of the areas that we're probably all responsible for—increasing awareness, not just with women, but with young people in general.”
On the subject of gender more specifically, Jones is clear that awareness is key. “If you see it, you can be it,” she notes. “That’s an important and powerful message and tool.” To this end, DAE’s HR team visits school career days in order to get that visibility and show young people, especially young women, the career paths that are available in the aviation industry at DAE.
“We talk about aviation, aircraft leasing, DAE, engineering, and so on, so I would hope that increasingly we're moving to a space where people are more aware of our industry and the equal opportunities that we have.”
What’s ahead
When it comes to the coming months and years, Jones is expecting “more of the same”, which means more potential deals and generally keeping busy. She is hoping for a steady year in 2025, without any major surprises like 2022 and with a continued focus on awareness around career opportunities within the industry.
“Getting the message out there is key,” she says. “I’ve explained to my niece who's 16, that, yes, I'm a lawyer, but the business that I work in is not a law firm. It's a business and we're involved in leasing aircraft and here’s what that means.”
Fostering this awareness plays a crucial role in the ongoing evolution of the industry, Jones notes. It not only helps attract fresh talent, but also naturally advances diversity efforts, as a wider range of young people begin to see aviation as a viable career path.
With this in mind, Jones is focussing on the long view for DAE. With a legal landscape that continues to shift, and a workforce that continues to expand its reach, Jones is keenly aware of the importance of resilience and adaptability when it comes to navigating the complexities of the industry. And she also knows that the key to continuing this path for DAE lies in helping the next generation find their footing in aviation.