Jetrader - July/August 2013 - 6

Q&A

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CEO Wolfgang Driese and
Board Member Bertrand
Grabowski share thoughts
on the bank’s business
model, strategy and future
of aircraft financing
Interview conducted by Bert van Leeuwen,
Head of Aviation Research, DVB Bank SE

As a part of Jetrader’s series of CEO interviews, this edition features a discussion with
two of DVB Bank’s board members—Wolfgang
Driese, CEO, and Bertrand Grabowski, board
member responsible for DVB’s board for aviation. DVB Bank is a European specialist ﬁnancier of big-ticket transportation equipment,
including ships, rolling stock, offshore drilling
rigs and commercial aircraft. The bank has
ofﬁces in Europe, North America and Asia.
In the following interview, Jetrader asks
Driese and Grabowski about the philosophy
of being a specialist transportation bank,
the risks and opportunities of ﬁnancing commercial aircraft as well as some of the recent
developments in the business, including the
increasing backlog for new jets, impact of
aircraft generation change and the bank’s

Wolfgang Driese was named
CEO and chairman of the board of
managing directors of DVB Bank SE
in 1997.

recent challenges with repossession of aircraft in India.
Jetrader: Wolfgang, DVB is one of the very
few banks, if not the only, that is purely
focused on the ﬁnancing of transportation
equipment. How did this business model
develop, and is it sustainable given the
volatility of the transportation markets?
Wolfgang Driese: To my knowledge,
we are the only ﬁnancial institution that
is exclusively focused on providing ﬁnance
solutions for the transportation industry
worldwide. Did you know that DVB actually
started as the treasury department of the
German national railways decades ago? In
the late 1990s, I joined DVB. At the time,
it was a completely different ﬁrm. Given

6 The ofﬁcial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading

Bertrand Grabowski joined
DVB Bank SE in 2005 as a member
of the board of managing directors.

the results of the bank, I was given the
task to review all options for DVB going
forward. Essentially I concluded our options
were either die quietly or reinvent ourselves
completely. The answer we found was in our
ﬁrm’s name; the translation of DVB reads,
“German Transportation Bank.” The problem,
however, was that we did not live up to our
name. We were everything else, but not a
transportation bank. So we closed or sold
all old and unsustainable business activities and built DVB’s current unique function
from scratch.
The acquisition of the aviation portfolio of Long Term Credit Bank of Japan
and the takeover of the shipping ﬁnance
bank, Nedship, accelerated this exceptional
conversion project.

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Jetrader - July/August 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Jetrader - July/August 2013