Patrick Hansen

Patrick Hansen is a Luxembourg entrepreneur and the Chief Executive Officer of Luxaviation Group, one of the world's largest business aviation groups. Over three decades he has co-founded four companies, two of which were acquired by listed international acquirers, and has led businesses through the dot-com downturn, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 aviation shutdown.

Patrick Hansen founded his first company while still a student at ICHEC in Brussels. avenew, launched in 1995, was an online shopping mall at a time when few businesses in Europe had any real presence on the internet.

In 1996 he joined the Luxembourg Post to commercialise its internet business. At the time he arrived, the operator had sold one hundred email addresses in total. Much of the early work involved building the commercial case for the internet almost from scratch, shaping a pattern that recure throughout his career: entering a category early, before its economics are settled.

In 1997 he left to co-found luxjob.lu, a recruitment platform, building the business while completing his MBA at McGill University in Montreal. It was sold to Nasdaq-listed Monster Worldwide in 2000.

That same year he co-founded athome.lu, a property portal that was later acquired by ASX-listed REA Group in 2006. In 2001 he also co-founded m-plify, a mobile alerting business.

Three companies co-founded inside six years, two of them acquired by listed acquirers on different continents, established a working method he has applied since: build with partners, operate the business rather than only capitalise it, and stay long enough for the model to prove itself.

Between 2000 and 2007 Patrick Hansen worked in strategy consulting, first with Arthur D. Little in London, then with Deloitte in Moscow, where he advised on industrial and infrastructure projects far larger than anything he had built himself.

In 2007 he co-founded Edison Capital Partners S.A., a consulting firm specialising in shipping, aviation and industrial participations. It was here that his focus shifted decisively towards aviation.

In 2010 he co-founded European Capital Partners (Luxembourg) S.A., a CSSF-regulated wealth and asset management company authorised under both UCITS and AIFM regimes. He served as its Chairman until May 2026, overseeing its growth from a standing start to more than €2.6 billion under management.

Patrick Hansen co-founded Luxaviation as an investor in 2008 and took over as Chief Executive Officer in 2011. The group’s operational roots trace back to 1964.

Under his leadership Luxaviation has grown into a global business aviation group employing approximately 1,300 people across more than 40 countries. The group operates a fleet of 225 aircraft and 39 ExecuJet FBOs, and manages Paragon, a partner network of around 100 FBOs worldwide. Turnover is approximately €500 million, generated across aircraft management, charter, FBO operations, helicopter operations and aircraft sales.

A business aviation group of this size is not a single business but several: asset management for owners, a service business on the ground, a regulated flight operation across dozens of jurisdictions, and a trading business in aircraft. Each has different economics, and running them as one group depends on operational standards holding consistently across all of them, in every country, at every hour.

Having built internet businesses through the dot-com years and led companies through 2008 and 2020, Patrick Hansen has operated across several full economic cycles: the dot-com period, which tested the difference between a market and a moment; 2008, which came down to balance sheets and the speed at which credit disappears; and 2020, an operational crisis in which an industry that had never contemplated a near-total stop had to decide, quickly, what to preserve and what to let go.

Patrick Hansen holds a degree in Commercial Engineering from ICHEC Brussels and an MBA in Finance from McGill University, Montreal.