Terra Firma and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board have sold aircraft leasing business AWAS to Dubai Aerospace Enterprise in a deal that will create a combined company with a total value of more than $14 billion. Terra Firma and CPPIB formed AWAS in 2006 and helped grow the company’s fleet of aircrafts to more than 250 planes in the decade-plus since.
The deal occurs in a B2B air transportation sector that’s been ice cold so far this year for private equity investment. After 40 PE deals in the space during 2015 and a similar amount (38) last year, 2017 has played host to a mere two transactions in the space, according to the PitchBook Platform.
Perhaps more relevant to Terra Firma and CPPIB, though, is that private equity exits in the air industry are on the rise. A record 13 such deals went down during 2015, per PitchBook data, with another 10 sales in the space completed last year. The sale of AWAS represents the third PE-backed exit in the space so far in 2017.
Article by PitchBook
