The founder of easyJet has warned that the budget airline will “run out of money by around August”, as he renewed calls to cancel a £4.5 billion order with Airbus.
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou also called on the company to remove chief finance officer Andrew Findlay.
It comes days after the businessman, who holds the biggest stake in easyJet, requisitioned a meeting of the company’s shareholders to decide whether to remove another director from the board.
On Friday, easyJet rejected the founder’s request for the meeting aimed at removing director Andreas Bierwirth.
Sir Stelios has now called for Mr Findlay to be sacked, as he said it would be “the best way to stop him writing billion-pound cheques plus to Airbus every year”.
It comes after the Luton-based carrier grounded all of its planes last week as demand for flights collapsed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief executive Johan Lundgren has indicated that the airline would consider accepting Government bailout loans if needed.
But Sir Stelios has said it will not need Government loans if it terminates the contract with Airbus.
He also stressed that he will not invest any further cash into the airline while the contract with the plane manufacturer is in place.
In a statement, Sir Stelios said: “Terminating the Airbus contract is the only chance current shareholders have to maintain any value in their shares.
“If easyJet terminates the Airbus contract, then it does not need loans from the UK taxpayer and it has the best chance to survive and thrive in the future with some injection of additional equity provided for by the markets.
“But if easyJet stumbles along whilst taking UK taxpayers’ money as loans only to pass it on to Airbus, it will have to raise fresh equity anyway in the next three to six months – reducing the value of our current shareholdings to close to zero.
“For the avoidance of doubt, I will not inject any fresh equity in easyJet whilst the Airbus liability is in place.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article