Russia’s Promsvyazbank to underpin SSJ100 lease financing

Promsvyazbank is supplying the State Transport Leasing Company (GTLK) with non-budgetary funding for SSJ100 leasing (Azimuth Airlines)

Russia’s State Transport Leasing Company (known by the acronym GTLK) has announced 8.5-year-term, 16.7 billion roubles (US$257 million) credit agreements with Russian Promsvyazbank. Some of the loan funds will help to finance leasing contracts for Superjet 100 regional jets, as well as for some railway rolling stock.

GTLK, Russia’s largest leasing company, is tasked by the government to organise the financing of SSJ100 deals through a combination of state funds and non-budget contributions. Private-owned Promsvyazbank was nationalised in December last year with the aim of it becoming a state-run bank for servicing the nation’s defence businesses and large state contracts. The central bank took over Promsvyazbank, Russia’s ninth largest bank by assets, in order to prevent its collapse.

Petr Fradkov, chairman of Promsvyazbank, has pointed out that, in the last six months, the bank has established credit facilities for aircraft leases amounting to 30 billion roubles (US$462 million). Its financing offers have been spurred by a 42 per cent growth in the leasing market (from January to September of this year).

“Our cooperation with Promsvyazbank enables us to continue offering the co-funding of SSJ100 leasing contracts jointly with the government,” Sergey Khramagin, GTLK’s general director explains. Most recently, the state allocated 9.8 billion roubles to GTLK in the autumn of 2018. The subsidies will help finance the purchase of eight Superjet 100s, collectively worth 18.7 billion roubles. The additional nine million-rouble cash injection was required to close the deal. Four of the aircraft are intended for Severstal Airlines, while the remaining four are reportedly lined up for Alrosa Airlines and RusLine (two SSJ100s each).

As of the first nine months of 2018 GTLK had 191 aircraft in its portfolio, including 44 Russian-made Superjet 100 regional jets. Of these, 36 aircraft are leased out to operators, including Yamal Airlines and Azimuth Airlines. This year the lessor has won two new potential customers: Alrosa Airlines and RusLine, both of which signed letters of intent in November.