EastMerchant

EastMerchant is a German specialist in asset-based finance for the airline industry, providing aviation finance arranging, asset management and advisory services for more than two decades. Founded in 1998 as EastMerchant GmbH, it spun off the closed-end fund house SachsenFonds in 2000, re-emerged as EastMerchant Capital GmbH through a management buy-out in 2009, and in 2017 created a fully integrated international aircraft lessor through a cross-shareholding with Crianza Aviation, which was sold in 2025. The company, part of an international leasing group, is based at Martin-Luther-Ring 12 in Leipzig, with a further entity in Dusseldorf and a vice president based in London, and cites more than 150 aircraft, 50 customers and 20 countries of experience, with over 100 transactions initiated, structured and executed for a total asset value above 30 billion US dollars.

Services

• Arranger: sourcing and structuring tailor-made financing for aviation and other big-ticket assets, including closed-end funds, investment opportunities for fund managers and institutional investors, domestic and cross-border leasing transactions, and asset and corporate finance, with transaction structuring and negotiation
• Asset manager: portfolio management since 1999 of portfolios worth more than 7.5 billion US dollars, currently a portfolio of 14 widebody aircraft, with ongoing asset monitoring and reporting, technical audits and inspections, credit and portfolio risk management with a record of no losses, and remarketing, lease extension and redelivery management
• Advisor: business development and strategy advice, market analyses and peer-group comparisons, structuring of investment and transaction solutions, tendering and negotiation of finance offers, support on term sheets and legal documentation and continuous financial management of projects

Team

The team combines finance, capital markets and aviation engineering backgrounds, including a project manager who previously designed cockpit displays at Airbus in Toulouse, a senior project manager with CFA and CTP credentials, a director who worked on structured and transport financings for LBBW, and a London-based vice president formerly with the aviation corporate finance boutique Numera Services. The company describes itself as a pioneer of the German fund industry and a major provider of aviation products to German investors.

Shows

EastMerchant appears in the sponsor lists of Airline Economics Growth Frontiers New York 2026.

Contact

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