During the 1980s it became the world's largest commercial aircraft lessor and expanded its shareholding to include Air Canada, General Electric, Short Term Credit Bank of Japan and companies in the Mitsubishi group.
GPA also had financing joint ventures with key aircraft manufactures, including Airbus, Fokker and McDonnell Douglas.
Former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, former British chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson, Peter Sutherland and the former chairman of ICI, Sir John Harvey-Jones, were among GPA's non-executive directors.
[4] The decision to float the company on the stock market in 1992, during an aviation industry downturn following the 1991 Gulf War, proved disastrous, as international financial institutions refused to buy shares.
[5] Unable to raise the capital it needed to continue its ambitious operations, the company plunged into crisis, with some $10 billion in debts.
The book is a personal memoir of the history, background and run-in to the failed initial public offering (share flotation), GPA's subsequent financial collapse and later restructuring and involvement of GE Capital (GECAS).
The availability of this cadre of highly trained specialists in Ireland is one of the principal reasons (along with a favourable corporate tax environment associated with the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Dublin) why the country has become one of the worldwide centres of the commercial aircraft financing and leasing industry, with over 40 companies, most located in the IFSC.
GPA's founder, Tony Ryan, set up his own airline, Ryanair,[8] that was Europe's biggest in 2014, carrying over 83.8 million passengers annually.