Stelios brands Easyjet top brass scoundrels
founder branded bosses at the airline ‘scoundrels’ last night as a row over new aircraft intensified.
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou slammed the firm after it delayed part of a multi-billion pound purchase of planes, but refused to cave into his demands to cancel it.
The company said it would temporarily ‘defer’ delivery of 24 out of 107 aircraft it has ordered from Airbus, including ten this year.
But Haji-Ioannou said the decision to press ahead with the deal – as Easyjet is taking a £600m taxpayer loan to weather the coronavirus crisis – was ‘scandalous’.
The Greek-Cypriot tycoon, 53, has called an extraordinary general meeting and is threatening to attempt to oust directors until the firm backs down and cancels the deal altogether.
Yesterday Easyjet said its deferment of the Airbus order would give it more financial flexibility.
But Haji- Ioannou furiously accused the firm of not properly disclosing how much it will pay Airbus and making announcements that were ‘ clear as mud’. He said he would write to regulator the Financial Conduct Authority to ‘force the scoundrels at Easyjet to disclose to the market exactly what is going on’.
Easyjet shares rose 5.5pc, or 35.2p, to 681.2p yesterday.
Takeaways have been one of the few treats Britons are still able to indulge in. The same is true in much of mainland Europe, where lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus have closed pubs, bars and restaurants.
Just Eat was the FTSE 100’s biggest riser yesterday as figures from its Dutch merger partner Takeaway showed demand for meal deliveries appeared to have stayed strong. Takeaway reported seeing a ‘temporary impact’ on its orders around mid-March, when more extreme measures came into force. But since then the number of orders placed has recovered and the average amount spent on an order has jumped markedly among at-home Dutch and Germans. Overall in the first quarter, sales rose 50pc.
The numbers were solely for Takeaway, which is not allowed to see any of Just Eat’s performance data while the Competition and Markets Authority investigates their £5.9bn tie-up.
The numbers for trading during lockdown, for now, are promising – even if they don’t cover the UK.
Just Eat Takeaway’s shares surged 14pc, or 926p, to 7558p.
The delivery group’s gains far surpassed that of the wider
FTSE 100, which rose 2.9pc, or 164.93 points, to 5842.66, while the domestically focused FTSE 250 rose 3.4pc, or 545.09 points, to close at 16407.92.
Oil prices surged by as much as 10pc to $36.40 a barrel as Saudi
Arabia and Russia met for virtual negotiations about production cuts. But crude later dropped back to $33 a barrel on concerns the talks to cut output by 10m barrels a day wouldn’t be enough.
Investors mostly cheered as more companies announced they were doing their bit to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
Engineer Ricardo, which is best known for making McLaren’s engines, rallied 9.5pc, or 37p, to 427p as it geared up to start manufacturing face shields for NHS staff and by care home workers.
Tiziana Life Sciences shares rose 53.3pc, or 20p, to 57.5p, after it revealed a hand-held inhaler design to rapidly deliver its treatment for the complications of coronavirus. It has now filed a provisional patent application for the new technology. Omega Diagnostics Group soared 81.8pc, or 9p, to 20p, after it joined the UK Rapid Test Consortium – announced by the Government on Wednesday – to jointly develop and manufacture a muchneeded antibody test.