Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou accuses board of 'malicious acts' and 'dirty tricks' after lawyers sought details of voting agreements
The easyJet founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, has further stoked hostilities with the airline's board ahead of Thursday's AGM, accusing them of "malicious acts" and a "string of dirty tricks" after company lawyers sought details of his family's voting agreements – in what the airline described as a routine letter to shareholders.
Haji-Ioannou claimed letters from the lawyers, Herbert Smith, constituted "frivolous and vexatious demands". His family's 37.4% stake in easyJet makes Haji-Ioannou by far the largest shareholder, and he has urged his fellow investors to vote against the remuneration report and the re-election of the chairman, Sir Michael Rake.
EasyJet said it had issued hundreds of such letters to all its shareholders and the airline's founder had been sent what was a standard letter in the runup to voting at the AGM. A spokesman for Haji-Ioannou said the correspondence was "more than a standard letter".
Haji-Ioannou then turned his fire on fellow shareholders. He said: "Rather than wasting shareholders' money asking Herbert Smith to ask me how often I phone my sister, I suggest the rest of the board get a new independent law firm to investigate … the voting arrangements between Standard Life and Airbus."
Standard Life, the second biggest institutional investor in easyJet, last week gave public backing to the board, as did M&G and Sanderson. They hold 17.5% of the shares between them. Haji-Ioannou said Standard Life, which manages the £4.6bn pension fund of Airbus's parent company EADS, should abstain from voting as it is conflicted by what he has seen as easyJet's excessive purchases of Airbus aircraft. Standard Life declined to comment on his suggestion.
Haji-Ioannou described the lawyers' questions as "outrageous and intrusive". He added: "These same idiots advised easyJet to go to court over the brand licence … this is just another malicious act in a whole string of dirty tricks to undermine my family's standing in easyJet because we have had the temerity to stand up and question the management. Mike Rake has been paying too much for the new Airbuses and has been handing out fat-cat bonuses to a handful of executives."
Haji-Ioannou has issued a detailed breakdown of how he will vote on each of the resolutions at the AGM. While Rake is the main focus of his attention, he will also vote against the re-election of three other directors, including the chairman's former KPMG colleague, Adele Andersen, and withhold his votes on the re-election of chief executive Carolyn McCall. He noted that McCall, the former managing director of GMG, owner of the Guardian, will "quintuple take-home [pay] relative to [her] last job without creating any real incremental shareholder value".
The London Stock Exchange regulatory news service, which publishes corporate announcements, declined to run Haji-Ioannou's latest broadside, sent out by easyGroup.
A spokesman for easyJet said: "We have issued over 300 of these letters in recent weeks. It is absolutely standard practice."
The airline has previously stated that it was committed to full engagement with all of its shareholders, preferably in private.