Well he should care. The DM is a sensationalist rag but the British public are fed up with greedy entrepreneurs and after all this we shall see how damaged the easy brand is. I worked five years @ easy and they hype themselves as cuddlier than Ryanair but internally trust me they are not. My thoughts and concerns are for the hard working crews and employees who will no doubt be royally shafted. 60 million for one individual is obscene and I am also fundamentally a capitalist. There will be a day of reckoning.

I recall it didn't work out that well for Big Ron...

I would imagine most, if not all the A319s will be retired early. easyJet will certainly need to be a downsized airline, as when demand does return, the best estimate is to a level 20 to 30% from what it once was for air travel.

It is inevitable that there will be a long climb back required for the airline industry post COVID-19. But what is the source for this "best estimate" that business will only recover to 20-30% of prior levels? Perhaps the immediate restart period will see those levels, as operators will have few advance bookings at the point of relaunch. But I would expect substantial growth from there quite quickly. Not to pre C-19 levels, but certainly to well beyond 30% of previous capacity.

In terms of speculating on fleet size for individual carriers, I would suggest it is way too early for this. We need to know the duration of the crisis, which carriers receive state support, and which fail. We need to know where markets are left unserved. For the carriers which emerge from this: CRISIS = OPPORTUNITY (as the Chinese say). If several established names fall by the wayside, the survivors will have some lucrative market gaps to expand into. A land-grab opportunity will arise. Slots at previously constrained major airports. Fleet strength and deployment will depend on which carriers remain to take advantage of the situation. Let's hope that EASYJET will be amongst this fortunate group.

Indeed. Forced out a few years later as the F1 team were not improving and sold his 25% stake a few months after that. I understand Ron Dennis is no longer involved with McLaren in any way. A massive fall from grace for a man that made McLaren into what it is today and the face of the company during its glory days on track, but it's also an extension of the fallout between him and another shareholder who he was once friends with.

Despite my suggestion yesterday, the McLaren/Ron Dennis tale should serve as a warning of what could happen if it goes wrong.

Anyway, this is going off-topic a bit!

Goldman yesterday predicated a boom quarter in Q3 this year for the global economy for countries that contain this pandemic well. Europe and the UK need to get their .... together.

That boom could take us well beyond the economic losses of the first two quarters of this year.

The airlines need short term fixes.

Are you, & Goldman, joking (bearing in mind the date) ? No one knows what’s going to happen - or when. This is totally unprecedented. It is nowhere near a normal economic downturn. It is infinitely worse than that ! No one knows what they are doing. How much is needed, where will it come from, who will get it, how long will they need it for ? Countless questions - & NO definitive answers ! WHEN this is all over, we aren’t going to be talking about economic booms !

Back to Sir Stelios, looks like he didn't get what he wanted and has called an EGM to remove Mr Bierwirth...

https://www.flightglobal.com/airline...137696.article

It was obvious that he wasn't going to 'get what he wanted'. The easyJet board were not going to cancel those orders in just a couple of days. This whole thing looks like a distraction and diversion which easyJet management and directors could do without, right now.

Obviously, no one knows what the future size and shape of any major airline may be, and any financial recovery is certain to involve cancellation or deferral of capital expenditure. There may well be a glut of decent second-hand aircraft from carriers that don't make it, which could be more attractive that new frames? Maybe 'new' easyJet will shrink naturally to a size that suits Stelios? But, who knows?

Stelios is obviously a very smart guy, but this action, at the present time, looks rather self-indulgent, unnecessary and very unhelpful.

This letter is now actually almost a week old and is where all the stories about the Stelios drama stemmed from in the first place. It’s not new news even though its only just being picked up now. Paper’s just making it sound like it’s a new development.. :ugh:

Whilst he may have a point regarding the future Airbis NEO order, he really ought to shut up having just filled his pockets up!

The decision to follow through with the threat to call an EGM as the first step towards changing the makeup of the board is a new development. Whether he is right or wrong, Sir Stelios is serious about it.

FWIW, my take on it is that he's using the current crisis as an opportune moment to attempt to force the cancellation of an order that he was opposed to from the beginning: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...95H04Q20130618

Stelios at it again with a follow-up letter. He is now demanding the head of a second "failed" director, Andrew Findlay, and berates his first victim, Andreas Bierwirth, as a failed former Lufthansa exec who has lost his employer a lot of money and got fired from Austrian Airlines.

I particularly like the spin that Airbus is a "Franco-German" company, conveniently overlooking the shareholder structure of Airbus SE and its significant presence in the UK and Spain. I am not really sure what the point is pissing off Airbus the way Stelios is doing, given there is only one supplier of a narrowbody aircraft left with the second clutching at straws to get its offering in the air again.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU4CFMAW...jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU4CFMFW...jpg&name=large

This is, by the way, the aswer to his first letter by easyjet:

http://otp.investis.com/clients/uk/e...newsid=1384394

He's also now nominated the CFO to be removed from the board.

How long could Easyjet really last under a pan-Europe lockdown without a Govt bailout ?

longer than most others

Anybody who knows certainly won't be discussing it on here, so anything else will be uninformed speculation.... :yuk:

So EJ BoD has said his call for an EGM is invalid? I'm sure that went down like a lead balloon chez Stelios. ;)

Interestingly, Stelios pointed out in his first letter that as variable costs have significantly reduced with no flights taking place and staff costs can be brought down by furloughs, his worries relate to the future spending on aircraft acquisition. That would suggest that easyjet can last for quite some time if a solution for the aircraft order can be found.

easyJet really is in an interesting position with the Stelios clan owning only a third of the airline, but having easyJet by its neck by way of the licensing of the easy-brand.

Reading the Stelios notes, it has all the hallmarks of someone who has lost the plot.

For his position to be vindicated, he has to prove that Credit Suisse are in cahoots with management to create a set of trading forecasts which are misleading at best, fraudulent at worst. There is also a clear accusation that the Airbus contract with easyJet is somehow based on bribes and fraud. Should they be minded to, I'd say that both the directors and Credit Suisse could take counter-action against Stelios based on this. Could spice things up a bit.