A DAE ATR72-600 aircraft. The lessor has delivered and committed to deliver over $1.1 billion in aircraft assets in the first six months of 2019. Courtesy Dubai Aerospace Enterprise
A DAE ATR72-600 aircraft. The lessor has delivered and committed to deliver over $1.1 billion in aircraft assets in the first six months of 2019. Courtesy Dubai Aerospace Enterprise
A DAE ATR72-600 aircraft. The lessor has delivered and committed to deliver over $1.1 billion in aircraft assets in the first six months of 2019. Courtesy Dubai Aerospace Enterprise
A DAE ATR72-600 aircraft. The lessor has delivered and committed to deliver over $1.1 billion in aircraft assets in the first six months of 2019. Courtesy Dubai Aerospace Enterprise

DAE delivers and commits to $1.1bn in aircraft assets in first half of 2019


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Dubai Aerospace Enterprise said it delivered and committed to deliver $1.1 billion (Dh4.03bn) in aircraft assets during the first half of 2019 as it expanded its portfolio.

The plane lessor grew its portfolio of managed assets to 51 aircraft valued at $1.3bn in the first six months compared to 40 jets in the same period last year, DAE said on Thursday.

"DAE’s capital position has gone from strength to strength over the years," Firoz Tarapore, chief executive of DAE, said this month.

The state-controlled company repurchased about 4 per cent of its common shares owned by Emaar, the biggest real estate developer in the UAE by market capitalisation, in a deal Emaar valued at $107 million. The transaction, expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2019, means DAE is 100 per cent owned by the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), the investment arm of the Dubai government.

DAE, which was established in 2006, became one of the world’s biggest aircraft lessors after acquiring Awas based in Dublin in 2017. The acquisition tripled the Dubai company's portfolio to about 400 aircraft, worth more than $14bn, at the time. Since the acquisition, it sold a large number of older, cheaper narrowbody aircraft and purchased a smaller number of new, more expensive aircraft which is why, although the fleet is smaller, it's still valued at around $14bn, DAE said.

At the end of the first half of 2018, the fleet size was 375. At the end of 2018, the fleet comprised 354 aircraft, it said.

The company said it sold 14 aircraft to an investor group, but continues to manage those aircraft, hence those sales do not affect DAE's owned, managed and committed fleet; they simply moved from the "owned" list to the "managed" list.

The lessor also said it does not consider an aircraft purchased until it is delivered. When it has an aircraft on order, it is part of the "owned, managed and committed" fleet. When the aircraft delivers, DAE announces that as a purchase, even though the fleet number doesn’t change.

The company purchased eight new aircraft, sold 20 jets and completed 24 lease transactions in the first six months of the year, it said. It has 110 airline customers spread across 56 countries.

The average age of its owned fleet is 5.9 years while the average lease term remaining on the owned fleet is 6.4 years, DAE said.

This month the global lessor said it raised a $440m syndicated bank loan. DAE signed a long-term unsecured revolving credit facility with First Abu Dhabi Bank and HSBC Bank Middle East as bookrunners and mandated lead arrangers. The oversubscribed facility was with a group of 12 lenders and DAE will use the money to support the "future financing needs of the business", it said without providing details.

It has increased its unsecured debt-to-total debt ratio to nearly 60 per cent, according to the company.

DAE, the Middle East's largest lessor, posted a 3 per cent increase in first-quarter profit which reached $99 million (Dh363.6m) compared to $96m in the same period a year ago. First-quarter revenues climbed 2.2 per cent to $360m year-on-year.

Key facilities
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The Sackler family is a transatlantic dynasty that owns Purdue Pharma, which manufactures and markets OxyContin, one of the drugs at the centre of America's opioids crisis. The family is well known for their generous philanthropy towards the world's top cultural institutions, including Guggenheim Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate in Britain, Yale University and the Serpentine Gallery, to name a few. Two branches of the family control Purdue Pharma.

Isaac Sackler and Sophie Greenberg were Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York before the First World War. They had three sons. The first, Arthur, died before OxyContin was invented. The second, Mortimer, who died aged 93 in 2010, was a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma. The third, Raymond, died aged 97 in 2017 and was also a former chief executive of Purdue Pharma. 

It was Arthur, a psychiatrist and pharmaceutical marketeer, who started the family business dynasty. He and his brothers bought a small company called Purdue Frederick; among their first products were laxatives and prescription earwax remover.

Arthur's branch of the family has not been involved in Purdue for many years and his daughter, Elizabeth, has spoken out against it, saying the company's role in America's drugs crisis is "morally abhorrent".

The lawsuits that were brought by the attorneys general of New York and Massachussetts named eight Sacklers. This includes Kathe, Mortimer, Richard, Jonathan and Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, who are all the children of either Mortimer or Raymond. Then there's Theresa Sackler, who is Mortimer senior's widow; Beverly, Raymond's widow; and David Sackler, Raymond's grandson.

Members of the Sackler family are rarely seen in public.

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It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
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1st Test Lord's, London from Thursday to Monday

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  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
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1.

United States

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3.

UAE

4.

Japan

5

Norway

6.

Canada

7.

Singapore

8.

Australia

9.

Saudi Arabia

10.

South Korea

Sam Smith

Where: du Arena, Abu Dhabi

When: Saturday November 24

Rating: 4/5

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Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo

Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm

Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm

Transmission: 8-speed auto

Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km

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Price: From Dh149,900