Oh dear. Hubris stalks the land once again. First rule of life - don't return to what you did yesterday, particularly what you did last century.

If this IS a bmi buy-out, he will buy all it's problems. If this IS a new start up, it's usually best to not be the last entrant into a crowded, saturated market in the middle of a deep recession taht still has a minimum of five years to run.

Bad move. If I worked in the UK airline world, I would not take a job with this outfit.

Mr Late Again!!
 

Think you have nailed it Paxboy.....Far from being a super businessman he is in fact a serial failure.....Cinemas/Car/Cruises et al.....all lost him loads of cash. He has badgered the Easy board to pay a dividend which they have now done. I thought it wouldnt be long before he popped up with another crack pot scheme...Seems this is it..

What really pisses on his parade is that Easy continued to do well after he left:rolleyes:

I have a few views on this. Stelios is only going to drive his shares in U2 down even further in value, if it was real - he would have at least tried to get the most wonga he could for them beforehand, surely?

Another view I have is, he's of Greek/Cypriot descent, right? I'm certain the Greeks have a habit of defaulting lately, might not be a good time for him.

My more realistic view along with the view on the share prices are ultimately, he can pull the Easy branding plug if he wants. Buy BMI, dispense of the long haul A/C, dispense of the LHR and other major airport slots and use the smaller A320's and associated variations to compete with U2/EZY - why not? He can afford to do that and he'll probably make a killing in doing it.

Doing better than ever, in fact. easyJet is a far far happier place to work than the one that I first walked into 15 months ago.

I'm torn, here....'IF' the plan is to buy baby, then I will be delighted, as that's my old airline and it would guarantee (hopefully) the jobs of my old friends and work colleagues.....BUT....As many of you have pointed out, the market is totally saturated so unless he is seeking or has found a really profitable niche market, I cannot see where this is going.

Still, hats off to the gent for seeking to create (or save) jobs in this crazy world in which we make our living !

:)

Flightrider - If you are being really pedantic CG and CH were leased from IAG (Independent Aviation Group not International) and operated by GB. I signed the original lease. IAG celebrates its 21st birthday this year by the way so Happy Birthday to all.

Stelios told me once " You know all the experts say easyjet will never work." Would he do it again - Who knows but I wouldn't bet against it.

He has to do nothing of the sort.

There is no requirement to do anything with his shareholding in Easyjet.

To my cynical commercial mind, the answer to this is clear.

Stelios has been having a shouting match with the folks who run easyJet for months now, and NEDs/EDs have been caught in the cross fire. He is clearly not happy with the way the board is running the show.

Now - if he starts huffing and puffing about easy2 - the Sequel - the other investors may well take fright, and start off loading their shares. Stelios has 38%. Let's assume one of his buddies has 10%. Get the other investors to sell, get the share price down, buy 3%, hey presto, it's his airline again. Then announce that the whole fast jet thing is a smokescreen, 'I looked at it in some depth and it wasn't the thing to do' etc etc, let it die a death.

As for a vehicle to take over baby. No. My guess is that if someone wants to sell part of their company, they will want a buyer who is not going to be mired down in legal fun and games for the next n months, whist the losses tick on and have to be supported.

Stelios does have covenants defining what he can and can't do, and setting up an airline in direct competition to easyJet is on the bad boy list. In any case, why would he really want to destroy something he owns 38% of?

TA

Interesting to see which no one has pointed out yet is that the business name "FastJet" isn't registered with companies house.

Could be all hype in the playground me thinks :hmm:

One of key gripes relates to the recent batch of Airbus deliveries which were to quote him, "twice the price" of those delivered a couple just a few years ago.

I thought that baby was to be bought by easyJet, something he disagreed with.

My guess would be some king of low cost fractional executive operation on the key routes that make money?

F14 quote
Are you sure?? Ok he started up easyjet with his dads billions....everything else the entrepenuer has touch has come to nought!! easycinema/rentacar/cruises/internetcafe...anyone!

You can't just write him off like that, he has been successful with easyBus, easyHotel (which keeps on growing!), easyVan and easyOffice among others. easyHotel is doing particularly well it seems.

That's business - not everything you touch turns to gold! He faced major challenges in the film industry with easyCinema which just wouldn't let them show first-run films, even if he paid the going rate! Who needs easyInternetcafe anymore? The market has changed.

I am not defending him, but I think it's unfair to judge him like you are doing. Yes, his behaviour is unprofessional. SRB has had failures too. Entrepreneurs take risks and sometimes they backfire!

TwinAisle, I'm of the opinion that would be illegal... Insider trading...

twinalise
 

OMG do you really think one of his mates has 150million invested in the company? The next biggest holder is M&G Investment Management Ltd which only hold 6.51%. The share price is actually up today, and if any market maker really shared your view the share price would be alot higher. Might I add if him and his family wished to buy the airline it would cost them some £950million.

fr-

I dont think it wuld be classed as insider trading, due to him not having anything to do with the running of the company. He should know as much as you and me . . . but im sure he has many contacts within the company.

fr-

This is probably going to be a different beast to easyjet, various 'experts' on rolling news stations have speculated that this is either a long haul operation or a premium service airline. Recent start ups have not done that well in recent years in either catergories. Does he still not own the brand name easyatlantic? if he was going long haul to North America I would have thought this brand would have been used first.

Of course the other possibility is that this is a non UK based airline, he is a savy businessman and I cant believe he is thinking of entering a already saturated UK airline market.

I agree, I just can't see another UK airline working at the moment. For some reason, I can picture a fleet of ATRs in the Greek Islands, but that's hardly a stable place economically at the moment...:ooh:

Fast Jet
 

Bad Bear,

What slots would he use out of LHR, hardly any left and those that are cost millions ?:confused:

Nigel

A fleet of ATRs and a name like Fastjet?

I remember not too long ago, AH was coming up with a 'slowjet', branded the Ecojet - a next generation proposal for 2020 with a goal to burn 50% less fuel.

So I just find the name fastjet incredibly naff - relative to land transport, all jets are fast, so what? We're well beyond Concorde, no thanks to BA for reminding us.

I know a lot of thought (and bother) pre-dates this announcement, but no effort at all has gone into that holding page (except the logo is an image file, not text, so someone has spent 5 minutes in Photoshop). Easy make a big play on their brand of orange - so why white on red? Pick a random colour? A Swiss reference? Just because there is no Fastjet Ltd, how about Gmbh or Monaco? Or anywhere else for a holding company?

No hint of what market this airline would operate in makes it look much more like a bluff, but if it is ta, how long has the tempestous Irishman had his Aer Beds & BJ plans for?

No can do.

Acting with someone who has 10% would be classified as acting "in concert" and is illegal and will get someone a nice big fine, its why Stelios's family holding are viewed as being all together.

Other sanctions including facing other shareholders as they sue for damages in a civil court claiming their shareholding has been devalued as other shareholders acting to buy their shares on the cheap.

In addition he cannot buy anymore shares, once you have 29.9% to buy any more shares you have to launch a formal takeover for all shares at a set price.

Ok he has 38% but that was because he has sold off his shareholding rather than buying more.