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In the madhouse that is pre-owned jet sales, one brokerage has just handed over the keys of its asylum to the inmates.
Concerned with the paths forward he envisioned with a company breakup or a sale to investment bankers, OGARAJETS President and CEO Johnny Foster recently decided to transition the company his father cofounded 46 years ago into an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).
"This has been the journey of the better part of three or four years," Foster told GlobalAir.com.
While the paperwork was signed at the end of March, the employees who now share a 30% stake (and growing) in the company did not find out until April 29. The news came in an all-hands-on-deck company meeting.
Was the brokerage being acquired? Was Foster hanging up the bow tie? The rumors whispered in advance carried a fearful chill.
"There was a significant amount of relief and high-fives around the table," Foster said of the ESOP announcement, cautioning that there is still a lot of information about the complex structure being digested by the company's new co-owners. "It's fresh to them."
Common reactions have included staff members jokingly being cautious about budgetary things, such as company lunches.
"It's incumbent on all of us now to think like owners," Foster said.
If an employee retires or becomes disabled, the company buys back the shares. If an employee vested in the program takes a job elsewhere, same thing.
John Foster III, a decorated Navy pilot with experience in general aviation, cofounded O'Gara Aviation with Ed O'Gara, a former squadron-mate.
The partnership held for four decades. Foster IV, known in the aircraft sales world and beyond as Johnny, joined in 1991 and ascended to president in 2005. Across its 46 years, the company has overseen nearly $10 billion across 1500+ aircraft transactions in 60 countries.
The company's mindset of doing things right, the OGARA Way, is an extension of the founding Foster's mantra: "Do the right thing right, always." The younger Foster said his father taught him that the family business is not a sales company but a service company within a transactional state.
"That's been a way of life since I was a kid," he said, "long before I joined my dad in the business."
Cycling through options and putting together a showcase for private equity firms, Foster said he realized when he eventually got an offer that it threatened what had been built over nearly a half-century.
"They quite frankly couldn't understand how to get their arms around a business that is closely controlled and closely run by an owner," he said, instead choosing to allow his team to hold the reins to how the brokerage will evolve. "By having the employees as owners today and tomorrow, they'll continue receiving shares into perpetuity."
In addition to the 30% of the company placed into the ESOP trust, Foster said he and his wife will continue to place shares into the plan. But it does not mean he is eyeing retirement.
He still has, as he put it, "bandwidth and desire," with "not at all an idea" of when he might step back. Spending, by his estimate, 200 nights on the road, he wants to keep shaking hands and making deals - with the OGARA team now holding equity in all of it.
"I don't know where that path will be and I'm not looking for an exit," Foster said. "I'm 58 now. I got a lot of energy and life in me. I love the business."