With 20 years of experience in the aviation industry, Brian Monkarsh brings a wide-ranging expertise in both transactional and litigation matters. He spent a decade with International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC), one of the world’s leading aircraft leasing companies, climbing the ranks from Corporate Counsel to Senior Vice President & General Counsel. From 2005 to 2009, he was the lead attorney in all of the company’s equipment acquisitions, including purchase contracts for more than 120 new Boeing and Airbus aircraft. He was also lead attorney in more than 100 equipment leases and in multiple litigation matters, including customer bankruptcies, collections, and equipment repossessions.
Monkarsh began his career as an associate attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles. Subsequent positions took him to Europe, where he first became involved in the aviation industry, serving initially as Senior Counsel at aircraft manufacturer Avions de Transport Régional (ATR), a French-Italian joint venture of Aérospatiale (now Airbus Group) and Alenia Aeronautica (now Leonardo) based in Toulouse, France, and later as Vice President, Legal, at Aercap Holdings, today the world’s largest independent aircraft leasing company, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Mr. Monkarsh graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. at Stanford University and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Journal of International Law. In addition, Mr. Monkarsh has studied at the Université de Toulouse, France, where he earned a graduate degree in international business law. He is fluent in both French and Spanish.
