Event History
The Geneva Forum was first held in February 1987 and has been held annually in Geneva ever since, making the 2010 event its 24th running – as such, it is the longest running aviation finance event in Europe. In its early years, it attracted about 150 attendees but grew rapidly and is now the largest aviation finance and commercial aviation event in Europe with up to 500 attendees annually.
The programme has also grown considerably over the years and now includes over 130 speakers over a period of a 2 ½ day main conference and a 1 ½ day workshop.
Programme Development and Focus
When the event was first launched, the focus was purely on the various strategies and techniques for funding the acquisition of commercial aircraft. However, fairly quickly, the event moved to cover much more than this and to have a much wider focus on the many issues affecting the commercial aviation industry in terms of its short and long-term profitability.
Whilst the programme always addresses whatever the most recent developments are (research is conducted each year with up to 150 of the key players in the field), some core areas that are always included are:
- The Outlook for the Economy
- The Outlook for Fuel Prices
- The Outlook in Specific Emerging Markets
- New Financing Strategies & Techniques
- New Developments in Leasing Structures
- Prospects & Strategies For Low Cost Airlines
- Insurance & Export Credit
- Joint Ventures and Acquisitions
- The Forecast for Passenger Traffic
- The Regional Airline Market
- New Developments in the Cargo Market
- The Manufacturer Viewpoint
- The Bizjet Market
- Environmental Developments & Regulatory Issues
Audience Profile
The event typically attracts up to 500 attendees from over 34 different countries and from all five continents. Attendees include senior executives from the airlines, banks, leasing companies, manufacturers and legal practices.
Speaker Profile
As mentioned above, there are now typically over 130 speakers at the event.
Speakers include CFOs and Treasurers from airlines, Heads of Aviation Finance from Banks and Leasing Companies, Aviation Analysts from the Securities Houses and Consultancies, Academics and Economists, Senior Management from the Manufacturers and Aviation and Structured Finance Partners with the top Legal Firms amongst others
An Interesting Experience
The Geneva Forum has forged a path for different ways of providing information and networking opportunities to make it a more interesting and useful experience than many other events. These include, amongst others:
- On-stage interviews
- cut out the intro and just get to the interesting questions
- Champagne networking roundtables - meet those interesting in the same issues as you in a less formal environment
- Electronic polling sessions – find out, live, what the collective views of the industry is on a number of issues
- Workshops – attend an intensive, focused event, with limited numbers, in which the workshop leaders get down to the real nitty gritty of key subjects
- Out of the Box Speakers – we like to bring a different flavour each year to the Geneva Forum of interesting and inspirational people from outside the industry – previous examples are Sir Ranulph Fiennes (explorer), Richard Noble (leader of the team who broke the speed of sound on land) and Professor Stephane Garelli (IMD Professor and Editor of The World Competitiveness Yearbook).
