Aircraft Finance and Lease Russia & CIS Conference took place in Moscow

The conference took place in Metropol Moscow Hotel on the 14th of April and gathered more than 170 delegates – representatives of aviation, finance, banking and business spheres to discuss crucial questions in aircraft finance and lease.

Impressive speaker line-up featured key local and international experts.

The 1st session called “Russia’s Air Finance: Economics and Management” highlighted main tendencies in aircraft finance in Russia. Alexander Fridlyand (State Scientific Research Institute of Civil Aviation) analyzed the current situation in aviation industry concerning competition, monopolization and price policy. Vadims Fokins (Embraer Europe) presented the prospects of Russian air transport from the point of view of western OEM.

The important place in conference agenda referred to airline strategy during the crisis.  Andras Bognar (ICFI) told how to identify crisis in airlines activity and which practical tools to use to improve the situation. Larisa Usova (Ural Airlines) presented the airline strategy in current macroeconomic situation. This topic was developed during the round table discussion. The conference delegates participated in interactive voting and formulated main issues and key targets for airlines management in current situation.

The agenda continued with session “Aviation Lease: Challenges and Best Practice”. Sergey Koltovich (Horizon Bizjet Leasing) opened this session and told about main changes in world aviation lease market during the last decade and analyzed Russian segment in detail. Patrick Metz (Lufthansa Technik) continued speaking about lease market and touched the MRO questions. David Bekker (Plane View Partners, Bombardier) presented the foreign lessor’s vision of Russian aircraft lease market. Alexey Kuznetsov (EY) spoke about trends in taxation.

Pavel Piskun (Sberbank Leasing) shared practical experience in aircrafts withdrawal which companies faced during Transaero bankruptcy process. Ilya Dvorkin (Allen & Overy) continued this topic from the legal point of view. Anton Kukoba (Raiffeisenbank) closed the conference presenting the only successful case of airline debt restructuring talking about UTair Airlines.

Aircraft Finance and Lease Russia & CIS was produced in partnership with the Russian Air Transport Operators Association. The conference was sponsored by CFM International, Allen & Overy, Lufthansa Technik. Sponsorship support – Embraer, Bombardier.