Smith lands at Seabury

In 1974, Christopher Smith was keen on earning a doctorate after graduating from Oxford University. The only problem was that he wasn't sure what he'd study.

Smith soon found a nontraditional doctorate program at the Aston University in Birmingham, U.K., where Ph.D. candidates study multiple disciplines and put them into practice. He decided he would study air fare elasticity through British Caledonian Airways.

The project didn't really take off, but Smith, 55, got hooked on aviation nevertheless. "I guess it's the sexiness of air travel," he says. Smith is now indulging his passion for all things air-travel-related at boutique investment bank Seabury Group LLC, where he is the head of corporate advisory in the New York-based firm's new London office, which opened three months ago. He's also a managing director at Seabury Aviation & Aerospace LLC, where he oversees a new airports advisory practice.

Smith is hiring for Seabury's corporate advisory team in London, and by year's end there should be as many as a dozen staff members in the office, up from the current six. "Obviously, we're in for some tough times in the next year or so in the industry as a whole," he says. "In the past, a lot of our work was associated with equity provision and change of ownership. In the future, I see work associated with normal debt provision, but with banks being more cautious about how and who they are lending to."

After completing his Ph.D., Smith joined Thomson Travel Group plc as a business analyst and did a stint at Alistair Tucker Associates before spending the next 14 years at Coopers & Lybrand/PricewaterhouseCoopers as global leader of airports and air traffic control. In 2000, he joined Simat Helliesen & Eichner Inc. in London, where his work included serving as lead technical witness for Italian carrier Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane SpA in the breakup of its alliance with Dutch carrier KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in 2001 and advising a Goldman, Sachs & Co. consortium in its bid for British airport operator BAA plc in 2006. Through it all, he says he still enjoys air travel, despite rising costs and increasing delays. "My wife will tell you that I get difficult to live with if I haven't been in an aircraft in four or five weeks."