Jetrader - July/August 2013 - 7

with DVB Bank SE

"It is important to remain alert; yesterday’s success
stories can turn around rapidly. With the upcoming
generation changes, this may be more relevant than
ever before. Experience from the past is no guarantee
for the future, and sometimes we wonder how
relatively inexperienced financiers can be so brave in
terms of advance rates and amortization profile."
- Bertrand Grabowski

When you mention volatility, the
ﬁnancial market crisis actually conﬁrmed
our approach. As a bank, in particular
one of our size, you need a crystal clear
and focused business model and a deep
understanding of the business. Today,
the order books for new aircraft or additional vessels are full, (you may regard
them as overbooked) so the demand for
ﬁnance is enormous. The supply side from
commercial banks has shrunk partially
substantially. Export credit agency (ECA)
or capital markets are important sources
of funding, but they are an add-on and
also vary in availability and reliability. So,
understanding the business cycle in the
various transportation markets as well as
having a strict discipline and business

focus resulted in a model with proven
sustainability.
JT: Wolfgang, we noticed DVB was relatively unaffected by the recent economic
crisis and continued doing business in
the aircraft ﬁnance market. How is this
possible, and where is DVB’s funding
coming from?
WD: Over the last several years, DVB
Bank reported stable, strong results,
and we continued to support the various
transportation sectors with new funding,
unchanged but not unaffected by the crisis.
Until 2007/2008, we reﬁnanced ourselves
independently through capital markets from
institutional investors and to a limited
extent from the interbank market.

After the, in our view unnecessary,
collapse of Lehman, all reﬁnancing markets
dried up for us, nearly overnight. The
theory that markets always function and
the price mechanism will balance supply
and demand turned out to be only a theory.
No price can compensate a fundamental
mistrust in a system—a lesson worth
remembering.
DVB has been in the fortunate situation of having access through its main
shareholder, DZ BANK, to the high liquidity of the German cooperative sector, and
during the Lehman crisis, this fall-back
position was essential. Meanwhile, back
to normality, we are sourcing the majority
of new reﬁnancing again from the market,
i.e. from institutional investors.

Jetrader • July/August 2013 7
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Jetrader - July/August 2013

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