14th Apr 2020 12:38
(Alliance News) - easyJet PLC founder and biggest shareholder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has written to the UK market regulator regarding the airline's deal with Airbus SE.
Shares in the budget airline were 1.5% higher in London on Tuesday at 691.20 pence each.
Last Thursday, easyJet pushed back the deliveries of 24 aircraft until the end of financial 2022.
The FTSE 100-listed airline said that in an effort to preserve liquidity amid uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 outbreak, it has deferred ten aircraft deliveries scheduled for financial 2020 ending September 30, 12 deliveries for 2021, and two deliveries for 2022.
easyJet added that its agreement with Airbus also allows it to defer a further 5 deliveries in its financial year to the end of September 2022.
But Haji-Ioannou said the airline's statement was "as clear as mud" and warned that the company maybe in breach of UK market abuse regulations.
On Tuesday, he said: "The scoundrels at easyJet simply do not have the corporate authority to cut such a deal given the collapsed share price and the monumental size of the Airbus order (about GBP4.5 billion). If the FCA does not force them to call a shareholder vote, my company, easyGroup, will not hesitate to take the regulator to judicial review as the law provides.
"In plain English that means going to a High Court judge to ask for an injunction requiring the regulators to do their job properly."
In a letter to the Financial Conduct Authority, Haji-Ioannou alleges easyJet has not complied with its "duty to present accurate and timely information" to investors and has not complied with its duty to obtain shareholder approval to defer the Airbus deal.
The founder said easyJet's statement about the Airbus deferral does not clarify how many aircraft deliveries will proceed in financial 2020.
"Given the global Covid-19 pandemic, the grounding of the company's entire fleet and loss of all its revenue, this is critical information, without which the actual deferral decision is impossible to understand," the letter continues.
Haji-Ioannou also said the financial effect of the deferral was "entirely unexplained".
"The company has a premium listing and is to be expected to comply with the highest standards of disclosure and transparency. It has not done so," he added.
Haji-Ioannou had previously threatened to personally sue executives at the easyJet if it spends "a penny" on the GBP4.5 billion order with Airbus and fails to repay its GBP600 million government loan on time. He also renewed his demands for the company to remove Chief Finance Officer Andrew Findlay to "stop him from signing any more billion-pound cheques to Airbus every year".
He issued a second call for a meeting of the company's shareholders - after the first one was rejected - to vote on removing Findlay and another director, Andreas Bierwirth.
By Paul McGowan; [email protected]
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