Alan Cunningham, DLA Piper

LEADING LAWYER DIRECTORY – Alan Cunningham, DLA Piper

Alan Cunningham is highly-regarded by business jet lenders, brokers, operators and owners.

Partner
London
T +44 20 7796 6996
E [email protected]

 Alan’s advice

“Get a good lawyer who knows the industry and involve them at an early stage. People need to avoid confusing “nice to haves” with real money issues. Clients and their lawyers often spend hours considering and then negotiating the nuances of terms which are unlikely to arise in practice, and where the differences between the two sides are minimal in any event. The trick is to accept some risk for the contingent but unlikely events and focus on the expensive and inevitable events such as an annual valuation or return conditions.”

Background

“I trained with Harbottles in London and spent most of my time advising commercial carriers such as Virgin Atlantic, TNT Express and British Midland. From there I went to Hong Kong and Paris and a large part of my work continued to be in aviation and aviation finance.”

Client testimonials

UK aircraft broker: “I first came across Alan around 2004 when I was working at a bank, and he was working for an aircraft buyer. He did a great job, was very commercial and pragmatic and helped to get a very tricky deal done.

Since then I have instructed Alan on many occasions and together he and I have worked on aviation lending and purchases in many diverse jurisdictions and running into hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Aircraft broker: “Alan takes a pragmatic approach and is definitely willing to go the extra mile, but always with a focus on getting the deal done.”

Official biography

Alan Cunningham started his asset finance career at Harbottle & Lewis, attracted by its relationship with Virgin Atlantic, before moving to Richards Butler in Hong Kong. He then worked for Norton Rose in Paris before joining DWF in Manchester, in the north of England. He works from DLA’s London and Manchester offices.