Haji-Ioannou further dilutes stake in easyJet

easyJet (U2, London Luton) founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has dumped another 1% stake in the airline, worth about GBP43 million pounds (USD59.2 million), continuing a steady sell-off amid a long-running feud with the company’s executives, a regulatory filing has revealed. The “Haji-Ioannou family concert party”, which includes easyGroup Holdings and Stelios’s brother Polys Haji-Ioannou via the holding vehicle Polys Holdings Ltd., cut its shareholding in the budget carrier from 27.73% to 26.7%, the March 23 filing showed. The party now holds 121,952,821 ordinary shares, a shareholding that is currently worth around GBP1.11 billion pounds (USD1.53 billion) based on easyJet’s closing share price of 910.40 pence (USD12.53) on the day of the filing. The Haji-Ioannou shareholding has been consistently eroding over the last year, initially with the sale of a small stake on June 12, 2020, for the first time since 2015, cutting it from 33.73% to 32.99% after the founder failed to expel four board members in a feud over the carrier’s strategy. That followed a GBP4.5 billion pound (USD5.6 billion at the time) Airbus aircraft order that he opposed, over which he has repeatedly branded the easyJet leadership as “scoundrels.” On March 25, the Italian trading and finance site Finaria published research showing how holiday bookings in the United Kingdom “went through the roof” following a government announcement on the upcoming easing of lockdown restrictions. easyJet flight bookings reportedly rose by 337% week-on-week, while its summer holiday bookings rose by 630%. TUI Group’s UK holiday bookings similarly rose by 500%. However, bookings slumped again after the government warned the public not to book holidays abroad this summer. Even though the UK has already hit the milestone of half of all adults receiving at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, continental Europe is struggling with the rollout of vaccine programmes. “My advice to anybody right now is just to hold off on booking international travel,” social care minister Helen Whately told the BBC. “It just feels premature to be booking international holidays at the moment.”