Ed. Note: Effective January 1, Boeing Capital Corporation has a new president – Michael J. “Mike” Cave. Cave, 49, is BCC’s fourth president since the Boeing product financing unit was created from the financing units of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas following the 1997 merger. Cave is a 27-year veteran of both the Douglas and Boeing airplane organizations. He talked with Point-to-Point about his new assignment.

Mike Cave President, Boeing Capital

Q. What do you bring to BCC?
A. First, I bring a genuine appreciation for the quality of my team and the importance of our mission. On a more personal note, I offer the benefit of many varied but relevant experiences. I’ve been a CFO of Douglas and at Boeing Commercial and from that I understand the business of business and about how transactions go together. My experience in running Boeing Commercial’s marketing department will be helpful in our outreach activities. From being in airplane services and airplane programs, I know about airplanes themselves. Given all that, I’ve said for years that my perfect job would be at the intersection of airplanes and money, and that’s where I find myself at BCC.

Q. Your predecessor was a major force behind BCC’s comprehensive investor outreach efforts. Will those efforts continue with your support?
A. Absolutely. It’s a primary and high-leverage role for us. We bring sources of financing together with users of financing. We also look to develop new solutions to expand financing possibilities that bring creative, available and affordable financing for our customers. Underpinning any successful financing is the value of the airplanes themselves, so our work in the appraiser community is very important for us, our customers and airplane investors and we’ll stay very focused there. We’re starting as well to work with the rating agencies for capital markets-based transactions to ensure that they have an appropriate level of confidence in airplanes as investment-grade assets. This will translate into better pricing for our customers.

Q. The aircraft financing environment is more stable in 2010 than it was a year ago. Does that make BCC’s job easier?
A. Underpinning the demand for our products is the basic global economic situation. I’m not ready to declare that system to be predictable or stable, although there are many signs that things are improving. A lot of financing comes from leasing companies, which are going through a large transformation. We need to watch how that plays out as that could lead to some instability. At the same time, we’re confident that it’ll play itself out in a measured way. There is also a lot of regulatory reform coming out of the financial crisis, and the law of unintended consequences can run amok here without industry leadership. . We need to be sure that regulatory reform is targeted and appropriate and doesn’t splash over to areas like ours that weren’t cause of or a casualty of the global economic crisis.

Q. BCC accurately called the financing market conditions for 2009? Do you expect to do the same for 2010?
A. I do. We remain in a unique position in that we don’t compete with financial institutions and don’t have to worry about our pricing, so people can talk to us. We can be fairly objective and gather information from a lot of outside sources. We are also uniquely able to add up our backlog one customer at a time and size how it looks from the bottom up. We can synthesize a pretty good picture of how things are going to turn out. We don’t see a lot of things changing from 2009 so we’re counting on many of those factors to continue this year.

Q. What advice do you have for your airline customers for dealing with the current financing environment?
A. I’d offer they shop around and become knowledgeable of all the alternatives they have because every day there are new regional financing institutions emerging and new products developing. Markets that you may have thought were closed to you are reopening. Be knowledgeable. And ask us to help you.