Team size: Six

What impact did Brexit have on the financial industry in Ireland?

From the perspective of aircraft leasing, very little in terms of the day to day. From a legal perspective, however, the loss of access to the EU framework legislation around the automatic recognition and enforcement of English law judgements in the EU member states has certainly created more uncertainty. Given the dominance of English-and NY-law in aircraft leasing and financing transactions, there is no immediate trend to move away from English law. With that said, if the UK cannot become a party to the Lugano Convention over time, there might be opportunity for Irish law to start becoming more relevant, given its similarity to English law and the ability for English aviation related jurisprudence to be highly persuasive in disputes before the Irish Courts.

In what ways do you see the in-house legal role evolving in your region over the next few years?

As aircraft leasing companies have been established and have grown over time, there has been increasing recruitment of young in-house transaction lawyers. As these individuals have become real specialists at transaction execution, understanding the asset management considerations and credit implications of a given customer, I can see a move away from the more generalist lawyer in aircraft leasing and rather two separate teams of lawyers developing, with one being transaction focussed and the other focussed on corporate governance, compliance and regulatory matters.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The period since early 2020 has been an eventful one for the aviation industry, so much time has been spent on negotiating and restructuring existing leasing contracts. But thanks to our focus on the credit quality of our customers, we managed to avoid becoming involved in any repossessions. Of particular note has been our involvement with the Norwegian Air Shuttle Examinership process, where we worked very hard with the airline to mitigate the impact of their insolvency on us, but also to do so in such a way that preserves a good working relationship and future opportunities to work together with them. Relationships are made and destroyed in these times of industry stress.

As we enter the next decade, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house legal industry?

I think that in-house lawyers will need to be increasingly industry and commercially savvy. As the world fleet of leased aircraft increases, the number of transactions will increase, without necessarily a corresponding increase in internal resource. Transactions processes will come under increasing time pressure and making good judgement calls on issues that may also straddle into the technical, credit and risk spheres will become an increasingly important skill for the in-house lawyer.