Taking 25% of Aircastle in a joint acquisition with Marubeni (2020)

Where to put a 25% stake

Of roughly ¥190 billion invested, Mizuho Leasing put up about ¥67.2 billion — around half of Marubeni’s ¥120 billion. In the act of buying outright the company it had chosen as a joint-venture partner in 2016, it did not reach for the initiative, accepting instead an allocation that gave Marubeni 75% directly and indirectly. The pattern of climbing aboard a trading house’s deal from the funding side, one year after obtaining a customer base from a bank, appears here as well.

This stake, however, first produced not profit but loss. Two terms after completion the entire ¥10.7 billion of goodwill was written off, and the term after that carried ¥16.1 billion of one-off items including unrecoverable losses on leases into Russia. Events that struck airframe residual values and airline credit at the same time ran for two years after the acquisition. Even so, the company did not reduce its ratio, and in 2024 subscribed to a US$500 million capital increase in proportion alongside Marubeni. A minority stake, one might say, is a place that combines lightness of responsibility with difficulty of exit.