Net Worth: $8.0 B

LAST YEAR: 7.5

CHANGE: 8%

AGE: 77

RESIDENCE: Beverly Park

SOURCE OF WEALTH: Aircraft leasing



THE MONEY: Udvar-Házy’s sizable stock and bond portfolio rebounded from last year’s downturn and his other holdings posted modest gains. His stake in the company he founded, Century City-based Air Lease Corp., gained 4% as business conditions returned to more normal parameters after four years of successive crises and airlines resumed new leases of planes. His stock and bond portfolio grew about 11% in value, boosted by rising equity markets. The values of his art collection, two private Gulfstream jets and real estate holdings and proceeds all saw single-digit percentage gains.




THE BUZZ: Aircraft-leasing pioneer Udvar-Házy founded International Lease Finance Corp. in 1973. He sold the company to American International Group in 1990 for $1.3 billion, staying on as chair and chief executive until 2010. Udvar-Házy then launched Air Lease, at which he’s now executive chair. Air Lease has weathered a series of severe industry crises, beginning with the grounding of Boeing 737-Max planes in 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic and then the stranding of 21 of its planes in Russia following that country’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Air Lease took an $800 million write-down against those stranded planes but managed to recover one of them later in the year. Air Lease has joined other aircraft-leasing companies in suing insurance companies to force them to cover the losses from hundreds of planes stranded inside Russia – those lawsuits will likely take years to resolve.