Latin America

"Hazy had spent some time working at Hughes Airwest and then consulted to the industry. Through resulting contacts, in 1973, Hazy discovered a DC-8 aircraft on sale for $2.2 million from National Airlines of Miami. Gonda heard of a Mexican airline hunting for a plane to use on a new route from Los Angeles to Acapulco. Putting the two concepts together, Hazy and the Gondas acquired the DC-8 and leased it to the airline. The economics worked, producing positive cash flow that enabled the trio to repeat the transaction profitably. They bought a series of turbo-prop planes from Hughes on the cheap—$250,000 each—and leased them to capital-short airlines in Africa. In the early years, the trio scouted for planes they could acquire at a low price and bought only when a leasing deal was in place. That required persuading airlines about the appeal of the aircraft operating lease. Airlines had conventionally bought their own planes or swapped them with each other under temporary leases to handle seasonal travel fluctuations. The significant capital required to buy planes had to be internally generated or borrowed. The idea of airlines leasing from independent third-party owners was new. Most of the trio’s early customers were airlines based in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, starved for capital and attracted to leasing."

"In the early 1990s, it became clear to Greenberg that, in the decade ahead, some $2 trillion of infrastructure investment would be needed across Asia, Central Europe, the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States, and Latin America.4 The need was driven by increased economic activity, growth, and privatization. For instance, as more people in Malaysia bought cars, the number of vehicles on the streets of Kuala Lumpur mushroomed, creating need for new and better highways. Similarly, as China’s economy expanded, the country needed a massively larger electricity grid to power it. As the economies of Latin America grew and living standards rose, countries needed new airports, communications networks, energy projects, highways, port refurbishment, and utility construction."

"First conclusions, first precautions. To prevent the invention, quickly perceived in Clermont-Ferrand as one that will, once peace returns, outclass the Metallic and the Pilot, from falling into enemy hands, all the files are clandestinely routed to Spain and then sent to the United States and Latin America to be safe during the duration of the conflict."

"No. My return to adventure capitalism needed to bear the hallmarks and characteristics of my past ventures: a business opportunity in a sector like telecoms that I knew something about, but in a territory that constituted a great unknown and fed my curiosity for the new. Asia was enticing but too far away for me to make any meaningful inroads. Africa is going to be a major opportunity but, with all the ventures I looked at there, I decided it was too soon; the necessary infrastructure was simply not there yet. Then I travelled to Latin America and decided that this was a place where I could do business."

"What in fact happened was a typical macroeconomic event in the form of Covid-19. The financial and economic effects for business were artificially prolonged by the zero per cent interest ‘rescue policies’ of the US and European central banks. I learned from my experience in Iceland, when I had waited too long for the tide to turn, to cut my losses and not leave any loose ends. So in Latin America I decided to make a clean break to fully focus on new markets and opportunities without any distractions from previous operations."