Meet our Team
FINNIAN O'NEILL
Chief Investment Officer
Finnian O’Neill is CIO at ABL Aviation. Responsible for the development of pricing models and provision of investment recommendations for our investors, he oversees the evaluation of creditworthiness of lessees and the assessment of risk / return characteristics of investment opportunities. In addition, he is responsible for managing relationships with lenders globally.
Previously, he held the role of Head of Analytics at Stellwagen Technology. In this role, he was responsible for guiding the development of pricing and investment management software in a team of quantitative finance professionals, web developers and designers.
Before, he was Managing Director at Stellwagen Finance, where he assisted lessor and airline clients in designing and executing innovative financing solutions using capital sourced from senior and junior lenders in both the capital markets and the banking market. Some of the transactions in which he played a leading role were:
- Senior PDP financing for lessor financed by large U.S. investor;
- Financing of Emirates 777 aircraft combining senior debt, Sharia compliant junior debt, and Korean equity;
- Structuring multiple private placements of senior debt using U.S. investor capital;
- Structuring and closing an Operating Lease Fund focused on buying older aircraft.
He started his career as an investment actuary at Willis Towers Watson in London, where he served as lead risk management adviser to a number of the largest pension funds in the UK, providing advice on fixed income investments and risk management. He was the lead adviser on multi-year hedging programmes for several clients, helping them implement £10bn+ notional of interest rate and inflation hedging, option-based strategies to achieve equity upside, credit default swap (CDS) strategies, basis swap strategies converting pay LIBOR obligations to pay SONIA obligations, and sell down of illiquid inflation linked corporate bond portfolios.
Finnian has been named in the Airline Economics “Top 40 under 40” list. He is a qualified actuary and CFA Charterholder, having graduated with first class honours from UCD in Actuarial and Financial Studies.