GECAS says it has con
cluded arrangements to invest about $4 billion in helicopter leasing and ship financing to diversify its portfolio.
The aviation leasing arm of General Electric injected up to $7 billion annually to resupply and expand its portfolio of 1,700 aircraft.
Although there is record demand for new fuel saving models of the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, GECAS is among those increasingly wary of investing in the models they will replace, as output starts to taper off.
“You have to be careful of the last of the line planes, we don’t want to buy as much but then we have to fill that gap unless we want to shrink we are looking as they taper production of existing models to find replacement investments that are safe and secure”, Chief  Executive of GECAS, Norman Liu, said.
Lessors like GECAS rely on assets, holding a predictable value as a cornerstone of their business, even through steep discounts may make it attractive to buy the outgoing models.
Some fear the value of existing A320 and 737 models, the best selling jets in the industry, will suffer from competition with new variants that burn up to 15 percent less fuel. But Airbus and Boeing say they continue to sell as planned.
Liu said GECAS could spend about $2 billion on buying and renting out helicopters to oilfield service companies and another $2 billion offering shipping loans through its debt financing activity.
“I think it is an area of potential interest, it is a different distribution process because of the different client base but it is something where General Electric has an existing rotor engine product. We would like to get some scale over time.”
According to him, we want to do sensible deals, we could just do some loans though our RK Air France Group Helicopters sell for about $20 million each.
On the shipping, GECAS is not interested in buying cargo vessels and competing with the industry’s many formidable tycoons, but would be interested in filling a lending gap left by European banks with roughly the same amount involved.

Flashback: Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State (left) with former Minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah, at the foundation laying for a perishable cargo terminal in Asaba, recently.