About

Prior to his current role as senior vice president legal at BoComm Aviation Leasing Ireland, Dan Kiely worked in the financial services department of Mason Hayes & Curran (MHC) joining as an associate in 2010 and promoted to partner in 2015. Throughout his time in MHC he worked exclusively on aircraft leasing and financing gaining deep industry knowledge from completing secondments with a leading operating lessor in Shannon, and also with the national British export credit agency in London where he advised on the financing of Airbus aircraft. Kiely was listed by The Legal 500 as one of five next generation lawyers in Ireland for banking and finance in 2018 and also lectured extensively in aviation and banking law as a faculty member of the law school in the Law Society of Ireland. During his time in MHC he also obtained an MBA on scholarship from Trinity College Dublin and co-authored a number of publications on financial services and banking law in Ireland. He started his current position as senior vice president legal and head of legal for Ireland at BoComm Aviation Leasing Ireland in February 2018. One of his major achievements was the handling of BoComm Aviation’s WOW air leased aircraft during WOW Air’s financial difficulties, avoiding grounding fines and other contentious matters in a rapidly evolving situation. Speaking on this Kiely says, ‘I led the project from the legal side and personally negotiated the grounding directly with the CEO. This moulded me as a professional as it was essential that I retained clarity of thought and had to have regard to both the practicalities and the legal considerations of an aircraft grounding and repossession in the highest-pressure environment. This project also required significant strategic planning at speed to anticipate and respond to the airline actions in a volatile situation’. Kiely demonstrates that he can operate with great sensitivity to the overall business’ needs in high pressure situations and under strict time constraints often diffusing potential litigation and resolving disputes in mutually beneficial ways. Additionally, as highlighted by a nominator, Kiely ‘is now among a very select number of European based lawyers with a deep understanding of the important distinctions of doing business from China to Europe and vice-versa’.