Aviation Capital Group received the Aviation 100 “Americas Editor’s Deal of the Year” award for its Aircraft Financing Solutions (AFS) $1 billion funding facility and the Aviation 100 “Asia-Pacific Supported Finance Deal of the Year” for its $500 million Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) loan financing.

Aviation Capital Group launched its Aircraft Financing Solutions Program in March 2018. The program focuses on the development and marketing of credit-enhanced financing structures to provide airline customers more alternatives and greater access to additional sources of capital for aircraft purchases. Crédit Agricole structured the AFS funding facility, and the initial $650 million commitment was provided by a syndicate of ACG’s relationship banks, including Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, Caixa Bank and Crédit Industriel et Commercial Bank. The facility has an accordion feature that enables ACG to increase the amount of the facility to $1 billion.

“As a complement to the ACG guarantee product, the funding facility enabled ACG to expand its aircraft financing program at the height of the pandemic when bank lending for aircraft finance had moderated and, in some cases, withdrawn entirely,” Bob Roy, managing director of Aviation Capital Group, said. “Through the facility, we have been able to remain engaged with our customers and offer certainty of execution and attractive terms during a period of great uncertainty.”

In December 2020, Aviation Capital Group closed a $500 million, three-year loan with Mizuho Bank, which was supported by an overseas untied loan insurance policy from Nippon Export and Investment Insurance, the official export credit agency of Japan. Tokyo Century helped arrange, lead and support the transaction, which represented a cross-border collaboration between teams from NEXI, Tokyo Century, Aviation Capital Group and Mizuho in Japan and in the United States. This financing is the first NEXI facility provided to an aviation leasing company or to any pure-play leasing company, according to Aviation Capital Group.

“The teams at Tokyo Century and NEXI were quite visionary and forward-thinking in identifying this unique opportunity to utilize Japanese ECA financing to support Tokyo Century’s core holdings in ACG,” Eric Blau, senior vice president, treasurer and head of capital markets at Aviation Capital Group, said. “This deal also demonstrated the high level of coordination that exists among Tokyo Century, ACG and the Mizuho New York and Tokyo teams.”

The Aviation 100 award winners were decided by an industry survey sent out to a global distribution list of more than 10,000 names over a two-month period. The results are subject to strict criteria and the deal of the year awards are also determined by an extensive nomination process.