Others News
- Minsheng, Airbus close to plane leasing venture
Date: 8-Mar-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
CHINA Minsheng Banking Corp., the nation's only non-State bank, and Airbus SAS are close to an agreement on forming an aircraft leasing company to take advantage of the growth in China's airline industry.
China Minsheng will own 51 percent of the venture, with Airbus's assembly plant in Tianjin controlling 15 percent, Minsheng chairman Dong Wenbiao said on the sidelines of the National People's Congress meeting in Beijing yesterday. State Grid Corp. will own the balance.
A tie-up between China Minsheng and Airbus would follow Bank of China Ltd.'s purchase last year of Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise, Asia's largest plane lessor. Growth in travel demand will triple the number of airplanes in China in the next two decades, according to Boeing Co.
'There's going to be a lot of growth in China and most of it will be demand for smaller aircraft,'' said Richard Pinkham, a Singapore-based analyst at the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. 'Aviation is a pretty shock-prone industry and leasing lowers airlines' risk.''
The government lowered the capital requirement for financial leasing companies to 100 million yuan (US$13 million) last month from the original 500 million yuan, in a move aimed at nurturing the development of the industry as it prepares for foreign investment.
Airbus plans to build an assembly line for single-aisle A320s in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, the first time either of the world's two big aircraft manufacturers have assembled a plane outside Europe or North America. The A320 plane seats 150 passengers and has a range of 3,000 nautical miles.
By 2011, Airbus expects to assemble 44 aircraft annually in the port city of 10 million, which is about 120 kilometers from Beijing.
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