Easyjet chair attacks founder for piling pressure on management during coronavirus crisis
The chairman of Easyjet has attacked founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou for piling pressure on the airline’s management team during the coronavirus crisis.
Haji-Ioannou has repeatedly criticised Easyjet’s management for its order of 107 Airbus jets which was signed in 2013 at an estimated cost of £4.5bn.
Last week he called for a vote to oust four directors of the airline including chief executive Johan Lundgren, chairman John Barton and finance director Andrew Findlay in what he called a “proxy for cancelling the Airbus contract”.
Easyjet has deferred the purchase of 24 of the planes over three years following the criticism.
Barton said: “Everything that he seems to do is destructive. There’s never a constructive or supportive suggestion in any way. That just adds pressure on a management team who are already pretty stretched,” the Sunday Times reported.
Lundgren last week told City PM that 34 per cent shareholder Haji-Ioannou’s intervention was a “a distraction” and “quite frankly unhelpful”.
He said his focus was “completely on managing this business through the worst crisis the aviation industry has ever seen”.
Easyjet has grounded its fleet and said last week it had raised £1.8bn-£1.9bn in extra cash to help it survive the shutdown.
The vote, which is likely to be at the end of May, requires the support of more than 50 per cent of voting shareholders to pass.
Barton told the Sunday Times that Easyjet faced “enormous penalty contracts if we cancel the contract”.
Haji-Ioannou last week said: “The scoundrels at easyJet simply do not have the corporate authority to cut such a deal given the collapsed share price and the monumental size of the Airbus order.