HI Deal of the Year Awards: New deadline – May 15th
The HI Deal of the Year Awards are open for entries until May 15th.
There’s still time to celebrate the best in rotary finance agreements by nominating your entries in the Helicopter Investor Deal of the Year Awards 2026 before entries close on May 15th.
Building on the success of last year’s inaugural Helicopter Investor Deal of the Year Awards, we want your help to honour the most significant rotary deals of 2025/2026.
Our independent panel of judges will shift through your nominations to help seven category winners: Best Americas Deal, Best European Deal, Best Asian/MEA Deal, Most Innovative Deal, M&A Deal, Best Supported Financing Deal (including export credit) and Best Borrower Treasury Team of the Year. From those category winners, our judges will select one overall winner to wear the crown Helicopter Investor Deal of the Year 2026.
Equinor and Vår Energi
Last year, the top award was won by Milestone’s sale and leaseback of seven Leonardo AW189 Helicopters with Equinor and Vår Energi. Milestone has closed hundreds of sale and leaseback deals since its launch in 2010. But its transactions financing seven Leonardo AW189 helicopters, including five for Equinor and two for Vår Energi, stood out for our judges. Rather than financing helicopters for an operator, these transactions were direct with two upstream energy companies. (Read the full list of last year’s winners here).
Please help us find a worthy successor for this year’s top award plus the other seven category winners. Whether it’s financial deals supporting life-saving search and rescue and air ambulance missions or helicopter support missions to drive forward the growth in offshore energy projects and other key deployments, help us honour the very best of helicopter finance deals over the past year.
To qualify, deals must have closed between April 1st, 2025 and March 30th, 2026. Nominations can include any financing of a helicopter, helicopter operator, helicopter dealer or helicopter leasing company. Please ensure all nominations reach us by May 15th. (We also welcome self-nominations).
The judging panel this year includes Alastair Fallon, director, senior appraiser with the consultancy F4 – Fly Fast Further First.
Nominations
Making a nomination is easy – simply send us the details requested below. Please send your nominations and supporting information to Mike Stones either by email or Word document. Please title your email or Word document with HI Deal of the Year Awards and the name of the category.
The Helicopter Industry Awards 2026 will be presented at our Helicopter Investor London conference on Tuesday June 16th.
Good luck to everyone who enters the awards. Together, let’s celebrate the very best of helicopter financing deals worldwide.
How to enter
Categories: HI Deal of the Year Awards:
- Best Americas Deal
- Best European Deal
- Best Asian/MEA Deal
- Most Innovative Deal
- M&A Deal
- Best Supported Financing Deal (including export credit)
- Borrower treasury team of the year
- Overall Deal of the Year.
Deals must have closed between April 1st, 2025 and March 30th, 2026.
Making a nomination
Please send the following transaction details and other information, either as an email or Word document, to Mike Stones:
- Borrower’s name ……………..
- Deal size in $ ………………….
- Structure ………………………
- Closing date .…………………
- Helicopter types (if secured) …
- Financial arrangers …………..
- Lenders ……………………….
- Legal advisers ………………..
- Tax advisers …………………..
- Appraisers …………………….
- Summary of why your nomination deserves to win an award …….
- The nominee’s name (This will remain confidential) ……………..
- The nominee’s email and telephone number…,……………………..
For more information, please contact: Mike Stones.
