Guinness Peat Award

Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA) was a Commercial Aircraft Sales and Leasing company set up in 1975 by Aer Lingus, the Guinness Peat Group (a London-based financial services company) and Tony Ryan, then an Aer Lingus executive.

GPA was based in Shannon, Ireland. During the 1980s it became the world's largest commercial aircraft lessor and expanded its shareholding to include Air Canada, General Electric, Short Term Credit Bank of Japan and companies in the Mitsubishi group. GPA also had financing joint ventures with key aircraft manufactures, including Airbus, Fokker and McDonnell Douglas. At its peak, the company was valued at $4 bn. Net income reached $265 mn in the year to 31 March 1992.

Former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, former British chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson, Peter Sutherland and the former Chairman of ICI, Sir John Harvey-Jones, were among GPA's non-executive directors. Lawson joined the board of GPA in February 1990 but he also became chairman of GPA Financial, a subsidiary company.

In 1990, GPA stunned the aviation world by placing a $17 billion order for 700 new aircraft over the following decade. A new company, GPA Helicopters Ltd., was set up in June 1990 as a joint venture with CHC Helicopter to acquire, own and lease helicopters worldwide.

The decision to float the company on the in 1992, during an aviation industry downturn following the 1991 Gulf War, proved disastrous, as International Financial Institutions refused to buy shares. Unable to raise the capital it needed to continue its ambitious operations, the company plunged into crisis, with some $10 billion in debts.

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