made it more and more difficult for the group to finance the aircraft it already had on order, notably the F100s and the MD-11s. It was also clear to them that ILG did not have sufficient funds to run a fully fledged, rapidly growing scheduled operation in addition to a major charter operation. ILG's opaque financial structure and the fact that as a privately held company its ultimate owners, some of whom were residing abroad, were not subject to the same kind of strict financial disclosure requirements as the owners of publicly listed firms further exacerbated the group's financial instability, thereby contributing to its collapse as well. In addition to the group's undercapitalisation and its overstretched finances, ILG generally and Air Europe in particular were not backed up by any significant assets. For instance, Air Europe did not own any of the shiny, new aircraft in its fleet. (These were usually procured on highly favourable terms from the manufacturers and then sold upon delivery to ILG's in-house leasing subsidiaries, such as AE Finance or AE Norsk, or to third party lessors, such as Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), from whom the airline subsequently leased them back. This enabled it to keep them off its balance sheet, thereby being relieved of the financial burden resulting from the aircraft's depreciation, while keeping a substantial interest in the aircraft's residual values, which were booked as profits. This sale-and-lease-back activity was a central plank of ILG's corporate strategy. It also constituted a major part of ILG's business and accounted for a large slice of its profits.) Neither did the group hold the titles to the freehold of any of the properties that housed its offices and other facilities that formed an integral part of the business. Air Europe's massive expansion into high-profile scheduled services plying trunk routes between major European cities towards the end of the 1980s, the airline's huge aircraft commitments lasting well into the 1990s, and ILG's increasing reliance on profits arising from its interest in the US dollar-denominated residual values of the aircraft operated by its airline subsidiaries for the group's overall profitability from 1989 represented a high-risk strategy for an undercapitalised company. This marked a major shift from the original focus on establishing Air Europe and Intasun as a major force in the UK charter airline/package tour market as well as Air Europe's excursion into operating scheduled services on selected leisure