Dr. Christopher J. Smith
Senior Advisor
csmith@seaburygroup.com
United Kingdom
Dr. Christopher Smith joined Seabury Group in July 2008 and has more than 35 years of experience in the air transport industry. He heads the firm’s Corporate Advisory office in London, which serves the financial community by providing due diligence and support for transactions in the airline, airport, and aviation-related business sectors, including ground handling. He also is responsible for Seabury’s airports advisory practice.
Throughout Dr. Smith’s career, he has advised a wide range of clients in all three major sub-sectors: airports, airlines, and air traffic services in the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world, as well as ground handling companies, government agencies and industry investors (banks, private equity, and infrastructure funds). He has specialised in market analysis and business planning in support of investment decisions and due diligence exercises on airports, airlines and related service companies. His experience also covers privatisation, economic regulation and airport pricing policies, slot co-ordination and valuation, and the institutional organisation of ground handling services at airports.
Dr. Smith was most recently Managing Director of SH&E Limited, with responsibility for that firm’s management consulting business focusing on airports, airlines and air traffic services in the UK and Europe. Before joining SH&E in 2000, Dr. Smith served as Global Leader, Airports & ATC with Coopers & Lybrand/ PricewaterhouseCoopers for 14 years. Prior to that, he was with a boutique air transport consultancy. His other experience includes work with Thomson Travel Limited and Birmingham Airport/West Midlands County Council.
Most European airport operators are amongst his clients including leading investors in airports (e.g. Hochtief AirPorts, GIP, TBI/Abertis Airports, Balfour Beatty), and he has also worked for airports in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, the Asia/Pacific region and Canada.
He also has worked with major airlines including British Airways, Alitalia, KLM, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Brussels Airlines, Emirates, Thai International, South African Airways, Royal Jordanian, as well as many charter airlines and LCCs throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and with organizations that include the European Commission, Eurocontrol, the UK Civil Aviation Authority, UK Department of Transport, French DGAC, Dutch Ministry of Transport, Belgian Export Credit Agency, and Airways Corporation of New Zealand and Dube TradePort.
Dr. Smith holds a Ph.D. in Air Transport from the University of Aston in Birmingham, and M.A. and B.A. (with honors) degrees from Keble College, University of Oxford where he was an Open Scholar in Physics.
