Airline Emirates has signed a leasing agreement with two UAE banks, National Bank of Dubai (NBD) and Emirates Bank Group (EBG), for a new Airbus A340-500 aircraft.  The US$119.5mn financing is for the last of the 10 Airbus A340-500s Emirates has on firm order.

 

The financing, structured as an operating lease over a 12-year term, carries a weighted average cost of funds 0.9% over six-month Libor.

 

Riyaz Peermohamed, Emirates “senior vice-president, corporate treasury, says: “This completes the financing of the A340-500 programme, which raised US$$1.1bn for Emirates over the last two years. The attractive financing came from well diversified sources with 29% from European banks with export credit support, 10% from Islamic sources, 24% from commercial banks within the GCC and 37% from commercial banks outside the GCC – a substantial portion of which came from banks in Japan and China.”

 

Emirates, the Dubai-based international airline, has 80 aircraft, including 29 Airbus A330-200s, 12 Boeing 777-300s, nine Boeing 777-200s, nine Airbus 340-500s, eight A340-300s, five Boeing 777-300ERs, one Airbus A310, one Airbus A310F and six Boeing 747 freighters.

 

To meet its aggressive growth targets, the airline has been adding capacity at rates seldom seen in commercial aviation in recent times – 30% in the past year alone – and expanding its fleet at an average rate of one new wide-body aircraft per month.