Mr Laurence Barron, speaking at Aviation Outlook China 2010

Mr Laurence Barron,
President
Airbus China

Graduated from Bristol University Law Faculty (1973 - LLB), Barrister-at-law England and Wales (1974 - Member of Middle Temple), ex-Conseil Juridique (1977-1982 - Paris, France), ex-Foreign Law Consultant (1978-1982 - Tokyo, Japan). Laurence began his career as a commercial lawyer, first in Paris for four years with Clifford Turner (1974-78) and then for four years in Tokyo, on secondment to Nakagawa Law Office (1978-82). It was in Tokyo that he first became deeply involved in aircraft financing transactions. Laurence has been at Airbus for over twenty eight years; he joined the company in 1982, as an in-house lawyer specialising in aircraft finance; after ten years as an international commercial lawyer in Paris, Tokyo and then in-house at Airbus, he moved to the business side when, in 1984, he was appointed Sales Finance Director North America, becoming Head of Sales Finance in 1985, and then, in 1987, Vice President Customer Finance. In effect, he ran the Customer Finance function at Airbus for a decade, from the mid-80's to the mid 90's. In 1994, he was asked to set up the Asset Management Organisation within Airbus and that year became Vice President and Head of Asset Management. Airbus Asset Management has full responsibility for all used aircraft transactions at Airbus and acts as an in-house leasing company for the used Airbus aircraft owned or controlled by the Airbus group of companies. It also acts as the remarketing agent for Airbus aircraft financed with the support of the European Export Credit Agencies. He was promoted to Senior Vice President of Airbus in 2001. After a decade of running the Asset Management business, Laurence was asked to take over the top Airbus position in China, and consequently, since the beginning of 2004, Laurence has taken up residence in Beijing and assumed the role of President of Airbus China, with responsibility for Airbus' overall activities in the PRC, including sales, marketing, contracts, government affairs, customer services, industrial cooperation, finance, communications, administration and site management, legal, etc. Laurence is a member of the Boards of Airbus China Ltd, Airbus Tianjin Final Assembly Line Ltd, the Hua-O Joint Venture between Airbus China and CASGC, and the Airbus (Beijing) Engineering Centre. He is also Chairman of the Aerospace Working Group of the European Chamber of Commerce in China.

Appearing:

8 July 2010 | Conference Day Two

9.30am