Our history
Alasdair Whyte and Louisa Whyte at London Biggin Hill Airport
Specialist Insight was founded by Louisa Whyte (managing director) and her husband Alasdair Whyte (editor). The pair met at publishing company Euromoney Institutional Investor. Louisa ran a conference group focused on airlines. Alasdair edited and published several magazines.
They saw how events and editorial could make industries stronger and decided to launch a company focused on niche, international markets.
The website for Corporate Jet Investor formally launched in August 2010 with the first Corporate Jet Investor One Minute Week email newsletter going to less than one hundred people. It is now read by more than 8000 senior industry leaders every week.
The first Corporate Jet & Helicopter Finance took place in London in January 2011. It was sponsored by six companies. All of them are still customers – and two have sponsored every year for more than 10 years. Around 150 people attended the first conference in 2011. Corporate Jet Investor London now gets more than 500 senior attendees from around the world.
Corporate Jet Investor launched in 2010 when the business jet market was still in recession. “Starting in tough markets is good as it means you stay lean as a business, so we were not too worried. We were also pretty confident that the market would bounce back by 2012. In reality this only happened in 2018, but we were lucky enough to grow during this time,” says Louisa Whyte.
In 2012 Helicopter Investor was spun-off as a separate business. After existing customers asked us to move into yachting, we launched Superyacht Investor in 2015. We launched Revolution.Aero – our technology conference business in 2018.
In March 2020 we launched the Corporate Jet Investor Town Hall to bring the industry together during covid. We have since replicated it for Helicopter Investor, Revolution.Aero and Superyacht Investor. We also ran virtual conferences including CJI Global – which ran live for more than 12 hours non-stop and had more than 5000 virtual attendees.
Semaphore Intel launched in 2022 to help aviation companies manage sanction and bad actor risk. We also launched Sustainable Aviation Investor in December 2022.
The best conference I have ever attended when it comes to technology and innovation in business aviation.
Per Marthinsson, Avinode Group
Our Vision
Making markets stronger by providing insight and bringing them together.
Our Mission
Independent and irreverent – We provide insight and connections in a fun way.
Finally a conference where I learned new insights!
Farouk Nefzi, Feadship
Specialist Insight has five key brands:
Corporate Jet Investor: events, email newsletters, website, magazine (print and digital) and training courses focused on the business of business jets. Looks at things like how to buy, sell and finance a business jet.
Revolution.Aero: technology conferences in London (March) and San Francisco (September). This part of the business is focused on the future of aviation so includes topics like flying cars, electric aircraft, supersonic aircraft and connecting passengers. Revolution.Aero also offers free start-up places.
Helicopter Investor / VTOL Investor: online publication and London conference. Strong focus on helicopter finance and helicopter company financing. Helicopter Investor was launched at the start of the rise of helicopter leasing companies.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor: Online publication and conferences focused on making aviation carbon neutral.
Superyacht Investor: online publication and London conference focused on transactions involving large yachts (typically longer than 24 metres). Our events brings together yacht dealmakers – brokers, yards, lawyers, financiers, tax experts and others.
Semaphore Intel: A unique Open Source Intelligence product for aviation.
If you want to know about helicopters this is the conference to attend
Crispin Maunder, LCI Helicopters
Our portfolio
During Covid you did not just bring the industry together, you kept me sane!
Aircraft operator