Selling jets to billionairesaires

“He has been selling planes for almost 40 years, and has shifted 300, worth some $4bn”

Steve Varsano sells billionaires the ultimate status symbol from his Mayfair showroom. Ben Machell reports

Imagine, for a moment, that you are rich. Really rich. You want to buy a jet. A big jet. A jet that can whisk you and your entourage wherever you wish in style and comfort, cutting through the sky like an arrow, its low engine hum barely audible beneath the clink and fizz of champagne glasses being refilled at 40,000ft. You have a budget – £30m, £40m, £50m – and, just to reiterate, you really want a jet. Of course you do.

If there’s one thing I can tell you about jets, it’s that once you start imagining what it would be like to own one – waiting for you on the tarmac, gleaming in the sun, freshly fuelled and utterly at your disposal – it does not take long before the idea starts to haunt you. I cannot afford a jet but, nevertheless, for the past week or so my thoughts keep returning to the possibility, and I’ve been repeating the names of makes and models in my head like a litany: a Dassault Falcon 7X. A Gulfstream G650. A Bombardier Challenger 850. And so on.

But you? You can afford a jet. And you want one. So where do you go? This is a bit of a trick question. Because, while there are plenty of brokers and dealers you can call, there is only one place in the world where you can just walk in off the street. It’s called The Jet Business, and it’s in London, on Park Lane, right next to the Hilton, opposite Hyde Park. It’s hard to miss. There is, displayed in the long, elevated front window, a large section of an Airbus A319 fuselage. Literally, a slice of luxury jet, for anyone passing by to see. If you crane your neck, you can peek at the plane’s interior, which, bathed in soft light, exudes a quietly confident ritz: comfortable cream leather sofas, velvety grey carpeting, art deco touches in black and silver. There’s a glass-fronted drinks cabinet. A backgammon set on a low coffee table. A heavy cream swivel chair, like something from the command deck of the Starship Enterprise.

The super-rich individuals who cruise up and down Park Lane in their Bentleys or Ferraris pass this window display day after day. And finally, perhaps after a week, or a month, or a year, they snap. And they pull over. And they walk in. Because they want to buy a jet. They will be met by Steve Varsano, a tall, broad 61-year-old from New Jersey. He has been selling jets for almost 40 years. In that time, he calculates he has shifted at least 300 aircraft, which represents something like $4bn’s worth of sales, although he says both theses figures are conservative estimates. “You stop counting after a while,” he says, almost a little bashfully. Varsano has a rich, sonorous voice, a deep tan and strong, handsome features. He wears a navy pinstripe Ozwald Boateng suit and brown loafers. He could be a Roman senator or a retired baseball star or a Rat Pack crooner. In fact, when he was “24, maybe 25”, he sold Frank Sinatra a Learjet, an experience that was “beyond surreal, like a dream”.

The bulk of Varsano’s professional life has been spent among the highest stratum of the super, super, super-rich. No one knows the private aviation industry – and the customers who power it – better than he does. During our time together, his phone hardly stops vibrating. “People are always emailing me, Whatsapping me,” he says. “I’m always on the phone, because successful, powerful people want instantaneous responses. And if they don’t get it, they move to somebody else.”

Since opening The Jet Business on Park Lane four years ago, almost 120 billionaires – not millionaires or multimillionaires, but genuine billionaires – have been through his doors to discuss their aeronautical needs. Varsano’s “showroom” is a gigantic wall of high-definition screens. Onto this wall, he can project a scale floor plan of almost any jet on the market, so customers can see how much space they might get for their money. He can also project cross sections of jets, and he encourages his guests to walk up to the screen and check how much head space it would give them. Then, at the touch of another button, he will make a huge map of the world appear, so customers can compare the ranges of different jets. Perhaps they need to get from London to New York non-stop once a week. But what if they also want the option of occasionally nipping to Abu Dhabi? What are your options then? And then what of running costs?

Some jets set you back £1m a year to run. Do you want that hassle? Or do you want something a little more economical? These are the questions that Varsano, sitting beside you, looking at the screen, invites you to consider. For 15 minutes, we pretend I have £30m to spend, and I genuinely agonise. I tell him I want to be able to take my family to America to visit my sister, who lives in Washington DC. I think I want a Gulfstream G450. Varsano gently points to the £1.7m annual costs. “You’re getting a big plane, but do you really need it? It might be overkill,” he says. I chew my fingers. In the end, I decide on a Falcon 7X, which is slightly smaller, but cheaper to run and has a longer range. We see what’s available and find a relatively new model on sale for £22m. I’m happy with it, and Varsano is happy that I’m happy. “You can fly that right out of London

City airport and go straight to Washington DC. See? You’re done.”

Varsano grew up in working-class New Jersey. “I was brought up in a very rough neighbourhood,” he says. “It wasn’t Mayfair.” His mother raised four children on her own, always doing at least two jobs. Varsano would help. “When I was seven years old, I would sweep the floor of the beauty salon where she worked,” he says. “Any time I could go out and make some extra money, I would. I’d make ice-cream sodas in coffee shops. Deliver newspapers. Anything.” When Varsano was 14, he was invited for a ride in a plane. His friend’s brother was having a flying lesson at a local airstrip and there were two spare seats. “So I was sitting in the back of this little four-seater aeroplane, we took off and I just lit up,” he says, miming a plug being stuck into the base of his spine, eyes bulging wide. “It triggered something in my body. You’re so free when you’re up in an aeroplane. Like a bird. I was 14, sweeping floors and delivering newspapers, and here I am in an aeroplane. What a luxury! I felt like I was the richest guy in the world, an elite.” Varsano began taking on extra work so he could save up for flying lessons.

Within three years, he had a pilot’s licence. In 1978, he started as a lobbyist in Washington DC, working for a trade organisation that represented small aeroplane manufacturers. “It was a great job, but it paid very little,” he says. So he would moonlight as a doorman at a local disco. He noticed that one of the men who came to the club wore a tiepin in the shape of a Learjet. “So I asked him what he did and he said he sold aeroplanes. He used to show me his commission cheques. I thought, OK, I need to find out where you work. It sounded like such a cool job.”

Even though he’d never sold anything in his life, Varsano convinced the company to give him a shot. “I went to the interview in the nicest suit I could find, but everybody there was in cut-off shorts and sandals and T-shirts and scruffy beards,” he says. “You sell aeroplanes? How do you do it looking like that? And they said, ‘We never meet our clients. Everything is done on the phone.’” Varsano looks aghast. “I remember thinking, how is that possible? How would you buy something that expensive over the telephone?” He says he resolved there and then always to do his business face-to-face.

It took him seven months to sell his first jet, and he took a second job waiting tables to pay the bills. “At 4pm I’m trying to sell an aeroplane for $3m, then at 7pm somebody’s yelling at me because I didn’t refill his coffee cup. It was an educational period.” Finally, he managed to sell a Westwind II jet to a company operating out of Venezuela. He remembers sitting in the jet with two men representing the company as they flew to Miami having closed the deal in North Carolina. “I felt like a king,” says Varsano, leaning back, beaming. “Here I am. I’m 23. I’ve sold an aeroplane. A jet. Unbelievable. I’ve got my suit on, I’m drinking a Scotch. I felt like it was a major step in my life.”

Only then, the two men representing the Venezuelan company, “who were sitting closer to me than you are now”, casually informed him that they wanted to discuss their fee. Varsano was confused. Fee? What fee? They represented the buyer. Why did they need a fee? He tried to explain this, but they shook their heads. They wanted a slice of Varsano’s commission. When he rebuffed them, they suggested, casually, that they all go down to Caracas to sort things out. “I said, ‘No, you guys are wrong. This transaction is finished.’” One of the men pulled out a pistol and aimed it at Varsano’s head. “He said, ‘No, Steve, we’re going to Venezuela and when we get our money, you go home. And if we don’t get our money, you will never be going home.’ My heart went from 35,000ft to the floor. I was shaking. I didn’t know what to do. What do you do? All I started thinking was, I’m going to Venezuela and he’s going to cut me up into little pieces and send them back to my mother.”

Varsano was effectively being kidnapped. They landed in Miami. There was no security in the private jet terminal, so the man with the gun marched Varsano off the plane to a payphone so he could call his boss and arrange for the two men to get paid. His minder was distracted for a split second and Varsano bolted. “I jump in a taxi and see the guy come running out after me,” he says. “I thought he was going to start shooting at me.” He boarded his flight back to Washington DC, making good his escape, and resolved to quit his job immediately. He laughs, still a little nervously, at the memory. “Is this what this business is about? Forget it. I want nothing to do with it.”

But he didn’t quit. He resolved to sell just one more jet. And then another. And then another. By the start of the 1980s, he was no longer doubling as a waiter. By the mid-1980s he was driving a Ferrari with the licence plate “BUYAJET” and appearing in Cosmopolitan as “Bachelor of the Month”, which he says was “very embarrassing. It just came out. I couldn’t stop it.”

Today, Varsano lives in London and recently acquired British citizenship. His girlfriend, Lisa Tchenguiz, is the sister of entrepreneurs Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz, who are worth a reported £850m. Funnily enough, he doesn’t own a jet himself. Indeed, he often advises people against buying one. “If you don’t fly more than 150 to 200 hours a year, you really should not own an aeroplane,” he says, looking at me sternly, as though this were a mistake I was in danger of making. “You should just rent or charter one, or fly commercial or something.”

Over his career, Varsano has seen the profile of his customers gradually morph. In 1990, 80% of the market was in America, 19% in western Europe and the remaining 1% was scattered around the rest of the world. Today, it’s much larger and spread across the globe. “You have to adapt to different people’s customs, ethics, values.” These days, the average age of his customers is down. Twenty years ago, it was usually company chairmen in their 50s to 70s. Now, thanks to Silicon Valley, more and more people are buying jets in their 30s and 40s.

It’s time to go. The sun has set over Hyde Park and the luxury cars rolling past the window all have their dazzling headlights on. I joke about the £22m Falcon 7X I’m going to buy and Varsano plays along. He’s being polite, but he also enjoys my excitement. He says he’s always amazed at how blasé some of his customers can be at the prospect of buying one. Half the time, they just don’t seem that fussed. He frowns. “I’m shocked that, for such an expensive asset, people don’t get much more emotionally attached to it,” he says. In this moment, it’s hard not to think of him at 14, taking a break from sweeping floors to sit in the back of a tiny aeroplane over New Jersey and feeling, for the first time, like a millionaire. Is he honestly never tempted to just buy a jet? He looks around and sighs. “I’m tempted,” he says, smiling to himself. “Yeah, I’m tempted.”

A longer version of this article first appeared in The Times. © The Times/news Syndication