International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC) announced yesterday the recent lease placement of 10 aircraft which brings the company's total lease placements during 2010 thus far to 150. ILFC chief executive officer, Henri Courpron says: "I am very pleased with the performance of our marketing team in a recovering market. These 150 lease commitments represent a strong improvement over past years and in fact are a total well above the entire fleet count of most other leasing companies. Our placement success combined with our improving balance sheet provides ILFC real momentum and is a true testament to the capabilities and focus of the people of ILFC."
So when is the best aerospace leasing company not the most desirable?
We had a great deal of replies to the editorial comment of Friday 8, October 2010. There can be no doubt that the fleet managers of many of the world’s airlines still see ILFC as a truly great company. They are right of course however the problem for ILFC remains its debt. Although this is not by any means a bad situation for the lessor given the turnover and the asset portfolio, it is a shocker to anyone who can club together the funds to buy the lessor. That of course is the other problem. ILFC is too big for anyone to raise enough cash in this market to come up with an offer that would not be considered a joke and then in turn of course any buyer would be taking on the debt which again in this market is toxic for most. ILFC will have to become a smaller business and pay off far more debt to be an attractive buy option, this process has been started but there is a way to go. It is without doubt a fact that if ILFC had never been involved with AIG and had remained on its own then the company would not need to worry about its debt or its portfolio size. All these worries are a symptom of the problems at AIG, not ILFC.