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Not sure if I can answer your questions, but my dad has worked in aircraft leasing for his whole career. From what he's told me, his firm only recruits out of a few target schools and doesn't really look at others. 

 

Mind me asking what schools those are? No need to tell me his firm. Just to clarify, I'm referring to the Irish market as it's the biggest in the world for aviation leasing. Thanks!

 

Ah not quite sure as his firm is based in the US. From what I know, Aercap is their biggest competitor in Dublin and I'm sure with all jobs, networking will be your best bet. 

 

It might be GE aviation. They've actually been bought over by Aercap.

You're right though about mainly hiring from target schools. I've stalked the LinkedIn's and they mainly hire from 1-2 universities as well as from abroad. Furthermore I've been told these firms don't hire people without a master's which is why I'm doing one in the first place. It's definitely going to be a competitive industry when the salary is high.

 
Most Helpful

I work for an aircraft trading / leasing PE fund based in the US. I don’t know much about the operations of the larger traditional lessors, but I can tell you what I know from my little corner of the industry.

We began as an operating business and morphed into a fund-only platform over the past few years to continue to grow our fleet. As such, we have a pretty big infrastructure relative to our size ~40 FTE. The employees are in the following groups (ranked by size):

  1. Commercial: Sales team & asset management
  2. Accounting/Finance
  3. Investments: Investment analysts
  4. Technical: Tech records & portfolio management
  5. Operations/Investor Relations

Investments is the most quantitative group. Not only do they have to read and interpret all leases and model them correctly for pricing, but they also have to do the credit analysis for their lessees/airlines, and maintain the overall fund models. They are also a bit client facing as they deal with many of their respective lessees’ requests.

I am the only analyst in the finance group and it is just me, a VP and the CFO that cover all the treasury functions, purchase mechanics, internal and external reporting, debt compliance/reporting, etc. My role is more quantitative than all other roles outside of the investment group, but most of the time my role involves updating existing models or doing ad-hoc projects. The fun in my role comes from creating new models to solve problems that haven’t been solved before within the company.

There is little quantitative analysis in any of the groups other than finance and investments since the economics of each deal gets flown through both of those groups before execution.

To answer your question directly, I think the most quantitative role would be within a data analytics group at a top lessor. The big guys have 100s-1000s of a/c and engines and each one of those assets has many data points monthly. I’m not sure how their credit analysis team operates, but it’s likely more of a check the box type thing (maybe not so much after 2020…) since these guys typically operate only with the best credits.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

What's your comp at the private equity firm? I know one guy from college who's at one of the bigger lessors and he said it's basically investment banking base + 50% bonus at the analyst level, but not sure how it progresses after that or at a fund.

 

Not sure what the other analysts make here but I assume it's inline with me. Started at $85k + 15% bonus when I signed on as an experienced hire. Bumped to $100k + 20% after two years (still less than my base would've been at my old job). I have been given carry in the funds too, but that's all paper money...

I do only work 40-50hr weeks, so it's pretty chill.

Bonuses here are also tied to the overall asset acquisition / trading targets of the firm, so as you can guess last year (and 1H2021) weren't the best for bonuses. Bonuses are 100% discretionary too...

We're about to launch a new Fund, the fees from which should put us well above breaking even on a fee basis, so I expect comp to improve to be closer to traditional PE comp.

 

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