General Electric Co. agreed to sell its corporate aircraft financing portfolio to Global Jet Capital, a lender established last year by Blackstone Group LP to enter the private plane market, as chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt works to shrink the company’s lending arm.

The transaction has a value of $2.5 billion in ending net investment, a balance-sheet gauge that excludes non-interest- bearing liabilities and cash, GE said Monday. With the deal, GE’s announced divestitures by that measure have reached $97 billion this year. As Immelt refines GE’s focus on industrial properties, Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management LP is taking advantage of the streamlining of the business to acquire a $2.5 billion stake, the companies announced Monday.

The aircraft financing accord helps reduce GE Capital’s exposure to aerospace cycles while broadening Global Jet’s access to a market that Honeywell International Inc. estimated last year will expand by 9,450 jets in the next decade. The portfolio includes loans and leases as well as more than 300 aircraft across the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Latin America, which sell for an average of $25 million to $75 million, GE and Global Jet Capital said in separate statements.

“GE made the decision a couple of years ago to dismantle the business, but the lending environment still exists,” Rolland Vincent, president of aircraft consultant Rolland Vincent Associates in Plano, Texas, said in a telephone interview. “A lot of jet users are interested in leases, but banks are constrained in what they can offer. So we see a tremendous opportunity for non-bank lenders. People do not necessarily want to own their assets.”

GE shares jumped 4 percent to $26.48 at 10:37 a.m. in New York. They had climbed less than a percent this year through Friday, compared with a 5.2 percent decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Global Jet Capital, which began operations last year, is funded by three global investment firms -– AE Industrial Partners, Carlyle Group and GSO Capital Partners, a Blackstone company in partnership with Franklin Square Capital Partners.

“This is a remarkable portfolio of corporate aviation assets,” Shawn Vick, Executive Director of Global Jet Capital, said in a statement. The investment “underlines our confidence in the long-term growth prospects of the large cabin, long-range private jet market. Corporate users and high net worth individuals will seek competitive financing solutions rather than allocate their own cash resources which are better invested in their own businesses.”

Closing of the deal will probably take place “in stages” over the next several months, Global Jet Capital said. The company was advised by Deutsche Bank AG, BofA Merrill Lynch and Citigroup together with Latham & Watkins LLP, Clifford Chance US LLP and Kirkland & Ellis LLP as legal advisors. JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Shearman & Sterling LLP advised GE.

In April, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt said the company would shed its alternative investment assets to focus on manufacturing and to remove the regulatory burdens of its Systemically Important Financial Institution status. Also in April, Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE agreed most of its real estate portfolio to Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX) and Wells Fargo & Co.  In June, after a highly competitive process, GE agreed to sell its U.S. Sponsor Finance group, including the highly sought Antares Capital, to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for $11 billion, in a deal that closed in August. In September, MidCap FinCo. Ltd. and funds managed by Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO) affiliates announced they were buying Mubadala GE Capital's loan portfolio.  Also in September, GE reportedly agreed to sell its private equity investment group to French alternative asset manager Ardian for about $500 million, according to Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

--With assistance from Thomas Black in Dallas and Mergers and Acquisitions' Allison Collins and Mary Kathleen Flynn 

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