Hot Features
Premium
Trade smarter, not harder: Unleash your inner pro with our toolkit and live discussions.
Chairman of budget airline set to quit after three years of internal difficulties.
Sir Michael Rake is to step down as Chairman of EasyJet following difficulties with company founder and major shareholder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.
EasyJet, which recorded a record annual pre-tax profit of £317m in November 2012, is currently on the verge of joining the FTSE100 and is Europe’s fourth largest airliner.
Following the news of Sir Michael’s intention to resign EasyJet shares fell by 23.5, -2.4%, on the London Market.
Whilst rules forbidding people holding chairmanships of two FTSE100 firms were scrapped in 2010, tensions developed between the chairman and founder, who has a 36% stake in the firm, following Sir Michael’s appointment as Chairman of FTSE100 firm BT Group, a shareholder vote in August 2012 which was carried by 53.3% in Sir Michael’s favour.
It is believed that Sir Stelios argues that Sir Michael, who is also deputy chairman of Barclays PLC and a director of McGraw-Hill, would be unable to dedicate the time necessary towards chairing EasyJet, calling him “Mr Conflict of Interest”.
Commenting ahead of his depature Sir Michael said “It has been a tremendous experience to chair EasyJet over the last three years. EasyJet is a dynamic and successful company in a vitally important sector”.
Sir Stelios had previously warned the EasyJet board against the purchase of further planes by selling 2000,000 shares and arguing that doing so “could screw up this financial success story”.
In a statement EasyJet’s deputy chairman, Charles Gurassa, said that during Sir Michael’s tenure he had ”overseen a more than doubling in the value of the company through the successful delivery of EasyJet’s strategy of sustainable growth and returns, refreshed the board, appointed a new chief executive and finance director, introduced dividend payments and led the negotiation of a new brand licence agreement.
Mr Gurassa, who is expected to take over from Sir Michael further argued that “All our stakeholders, passengers, shareholders and employees have benefited from the excellent performance of EasyJet under [Sir Michael’s] chairmanship through this period. We wish him every success in the future”.
