Easyjet founder fails to unseat bosses over order for Airbus jets

EASYJET founder Sir Stelios Hajiioannou has lost a bid to unseat the company’s directors in a row over a £4.5bn order for Airbus planes.

Sir Stelios, who with his family owns a 34pc stake in the airline, had called a virtual company meeting to lobby for the removal of four board members, including Johan Lundgren, the chief ex- ecutive, and John Barton, the chairman.

Mr Barton said all four resolutions were defeated, with more than 99pc of votes cast by shareholders who are not Sir Stelios and his family being in support of the airline’s management.

Sir Stelios hit out at the result, which he claimed was “fraudulent”.

“The results constitute voting fraud as at least 15pc of the shares held by the three ‘strawmen’ [Invesco, Ninety One UK and Phoenix] are controlled by Airbus and were therefore ‘related parties’ in this vote,” he said.

Sir Stelios claimed the three wealth managers were “controlled by Airbus” because they were also invested in the aerospace giant. Invesco declined to comment. Ninety One UK did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Phoenix said: “That allegation is completely untrue. We do not and have never in our corporate history managed any money for Airbus. To my knowledge I haven’t spoken to anyone from Airbus in my 52 years on this planet. We have also never had any dialogue with those other two named shareholders on easyjet.”

The Greek-cypriot billionaire has repeatedly been at odds with the airline’s current management over its expansion. He is vehemently opposed to the airline’s order of 107 planes from Airbus, saying that it needs to reduce, not expand, its capacity as the market recovers following Covid-19.

After launching his campaign at the end of March, Sir Stelios issued several broadsides against management, and warned that the carrier risked running out of cash by August if it went ahead with the order.

He even offered a £5m bounty to whistleblowers who could help force the carrier to scrap the order.

However, Sir Stelios failed to convince other investors to support his tussle with the leadership.

Mr Barton said: “The board seeks good relationships with all of the company’s shareholders and hopes to be able to re-engage constructively with Sir Stelios.”

Easyjet’s fleet has been grounded since March, but the carrier said on Thursday that it would restart flights in the UK and France from June 15.

Earlier this week, it revealed it had fallen victim to a “highly sophisticated” cyber attack that exposed credit card details and email addresses, presenting another headache for its bosses.