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Marathon not a sprint
01 November 2005
German banks are stepping up their aircraft activity after a few quiet years. Alexandra Cain reports from Frankfurt, Hamburg and Hannover.
Read more:
Aviation
aircraft finance; HSH Nordbank; DVB; NordLB; WestLB; Export credit
Airlines
Few countries have lent as much to aviation as German banks. While US, UK and Japanese banks all had lean periods in the 1990s, German banks could be relied on to participate in loans, structure German leases and arrange export credit.
Unfortunately, this meant that they were heavily exposed to carriers such as Air Canada, Swissair and Sabena. But anyone who thought that this would cause German banks to be marginalized in aircraft finance in the long term was wrong.
Many German banks have a strong history in transport finance – because of the major ports in the North and Airbus in Hamburg – and they are not planning to give up easily. Some have remained rather low-key over the past couple of years but they are coming back into the market.
Many, through tough experience, have realized that they need a different approach to aircraft finance than straight debt financing. Most...
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