International Registry of Mobile Assets has a busy first year

Citation

(2007), "International Registry of Mobile Assets has a busy first year", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 79 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2007.12779eaf.005

International Registry of Mobile Assets has a busy first year

International Registry of Mobile Assets has a busy first year

Operational details of the International registry of mobile assets' operation for the year ending February 2007 were announced recently. In what was a buoyant year for aviation finance, and in the Registry's first year of operation, 18,000 airframes, aircraft engines and helicopters were registered.

The Registry, the only global database of its kind, is based on the Cape Town Convention and Protocol, an international treaty on financing and leasing aircraft, which is designed to induce private sector creditors to assume risk and release funds by giving creditors more certainty in bankruptcy situations. It does so by creating greater confidence as to how the relevant legal regime will respect the creditors' contractual rights, and by giving creditors efficient and effective means of enforcing their rights. The International Registry is an essential part of the Cape Town architecture since it provides a method of recording security interests and determining their priority.

The key usage figures for the first 12 months of the Registry's operation (March 2006-February 2007) include:

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  18,000 objects (airframes, aircraft engines, helicopters) were registered;

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  39,600 interests were registered against those objects;

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  7,500 administrators and users were approved to operate;

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  12,200 registration sessions; and

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  39,700 search sessions;

Niall Greene, Managing Director of Aviareto, Managers of the Registry, said: “I am proud of how well the Registry has performed in its first year. It is a highly complex system that has been continually improved throughout the year. We have further planned improvements over the coming year, the most important of which will be the ability to register fractional ownership of aircraft as of May, which is of particular importance to financing in the business jet market.”

The market for the fractional ownership of business jets is already well established, particularly in the USA, with fractional companies currently accounting for 12-15 per cent of new business jet deliveries (Teal Group), and the market is growing rapidly in Europe and Asia. Since, a whole aircraft must be accounted for on the Registry there has, up to now, been no facility of registering partial ownership.

A further expected development in 2007 is the geographical expansion of the Registry, as more countries ratify the Cape Town Convention. To date, 16 contracting states (Afghanistan, Angola, Columbia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Senegal, USA and South Africa) have signed the treaty and further countries are likely to join them in 2007.

The success of the Registry is set to be replicated in other areas of financing mobile assets: the Cape Town Convention also provides for international registries of railway rolling stock and space objects. The protocol for the railway rolling stock registry was signed in Luxembourg on 23 February 2007 and development of the registry is underway; the protocol for a space objects registry is currently under discussion.