Castlelake announced the formation of Merit AirFinance, an aviation lending business which will provide debt capital to airlines and leasing companies for new and used aviation assets.

Merit AirFinance seeks to provide separation between Castlelake’s leasing and lending offerings as a new operating subsidiary focused on providing flexible, innovative debt solutions to airlines and leasing companies. Merit will build on Castlelake’s robust aviation lending activity, having deployed more than $5 billion to airlines and leasing companies since 2020.

Merit will have a separate office space and a dedicated origination team. Patrick Mahoney will transition from Castlelake’s aviation capital markets function to lead Merit AirFinance as its President. Mr. Mahoney will leverage experience in previous roles within Castlelake’s aviation underwriting, asset-based direct lending teams and aviation capital markets teams to lead Merit’s strategy. Concurrently, Castlelake will welcome Jakob Gallagher to assume Mr. Mahoney’s former role, leading Castlelake’s aviation capital markets function. Mr. Gallagher has 13 years of experience in aviation capital markets and financing and recently served as Head of Capital Markets at Wings Capital Partners.  

“Castlelake has continuously innovated to provide the aviation market with flexible solutions across all aviation assets and the capital stack, and the formation of Merit AirFinance exemplifies this commitment to a solutions-oriented partnership approach,” said Evan Carruthers, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Castlelake. “We believe that this approach is valuable to both aviation industry participants and our investors and that it enables us to create more opportunities to match capital with attractive risk-adjusted aviation exposure.”

Merit launches with the ability to deploy more than $1.8 billion of committed capital via separately managed accounts.