Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing to acquire 35% stake in LCI

Libra Group, whose sub­sidiaries oper­ate assets in near­ly 60 coun­tries, has announced that Sum­it­o­mo Mit­sui Finance and Leas­ing (SMFL) has agreed to acquire a 35% stake in its avi­a­tion sub­sidiary, LCI.

LCI’s first part­ner­ship with SMFL began in 2020 with the launch of a $230 mil­lion heli­copter leas­ing joint ven­ture of 19 heli­copters, and now has a port­fo­lio of over 50 air­craft val­ued at over $550 mil­lion.

In the last 12 months alone, LCI has expand­ed into the advanced air mobil­i­ty sec­tor with an order for up to 125 ALIA-250 eVTOL air­craft from BETA Tech­nolo­gies and up to 40 Chap­ar­ral VTOL air­craft from Elroy Air. Upon the deliv­ery of all its new orders, LCI will have a fleet of close to 350 air­craft that will be leased across the world.

“We are hon­oured to part­ner with SMFL, whose staff has shown pro­fes­sion­al, moral and eth­i­cal char­ac­ter, as well as a deep com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and social impact,” said Libra Group exec­u­tive chair­man George Logo­thetis.

“It is these shared val­ues that will cre­ate an endur­ing part­ner­ship and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion are end­less, from avi­a­tion, to mar­itime, to renew­able ener­gy.”

Masa­ki Tachibana, pres­i­dent of SMFL, added: “The invest­ment by SMFL into LCI is the next step in what we hope will be a series of strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tions across the heli­copter and rel­e­vant indus­tries, which enables both of us to fur­ther strength­en LCI’s busi­ness.”

LCI CEO Jas­pal Jan­du con­tin­ued: “LCI is delight­ed to expand and solid­i­fy its rela­tion­ship with SMFL. Giv­en our shared val­ues and cul­ture, they rep­re­sent an ide­al part­ner as we embark on the next chap­ter in our devel­op­ment.”

Since Libra cre­at­ed LCI in 2004, LCI has under­tak­en over $10 bil­lion of trans­ac­tions in avi­a­tion. LCI has built a track record of suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ing mar­ket cycles and antic­i­pat­ing future cus­tomer needs.

Some exam­ples include a land­mark $1 bil­lion sale of 21 air­craft in 2007, fol­lowed by a $400 mil­lion order for a fleet of Leonar­do heli­copters in 2012 that remain in ser­vice today.

Through part­ner­ships with indus­try lead­ers, LCI main­tains a fleet of mod­ern avi­a­tion assets. Many are deployed in mis­sion-crit­i­cal sec­tors such as emer­gency med­ical ser­vices, search and res­cue and off­shore wind ener­gy.

In Jan­u­ary, LCI signed an agree­ment to acquire up to 40 of Elroy Air’s Chap­ar­ral VTOL air­craft. LCI will ini­tial­ly acquire 20 air­craft, with an option for a total of up to 40 units.

LCI com­mits to acquire up to 40 of Elroy Air’s Chap­ar­ral VTOL air­craft