( www.forbes.com ) NEW YORK – Investors are opportunists, and both love bankruptcies. The airline industry is obliging all of them.
Hedge funds and private equity groups are flocking to take on securities whose value is backed by leases on aircraft or actual airplanes themselves. What’s more, some hedge funds are jumping straight into the leasing business and helping to revive a corner of the asset-backed securities market that has been dormant for two years.
Hedge funds and private equity groups are investing in the aircraft sector in record numbers, “buying the debt or buying the metal and crossing over where it makes sense,” says Mark Heberle, a structured finance analyst at Wachovia Securities who equates metal with the planes we all fly.
