Japanese operating lease

JOL, a leveraged operating-lease structure for ship finance built around a Japanese tokumei kumiai partnership. Japanese equity investors fund part of the asset cost and a bank lends the rest; the ship is bareboat chartered to the operator, and the investors take accelerated tax depreciation. The JOLCO variant adds a fixed-price purchase option for the lessee. JOLs are a long-standing channel for funding aircraft and ships into operators that want off-balance-sheet, tax-efficient finance.