EasyJet’s Stelios offers GBP5m reward in Airbus deal fight

EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou has offered a multimillion pound reward for information that could lead to the cancellation of the airline’s contract with Airbus as he upped the stakes in his dispute with the carrier. Sir Stelios, easyJet’s biggest shareholder, announced on Tuesday that he would pay from his own pocket up to GBP5m for “useful information” in his fight to stop a multibillion pound order for 107 Airbus aircraft. The entrepreneur, who founded the budget carrier in 1995, has attempted to remove four easyJet directors, including chairman John Barton and CE Johan Lundgren, over the deal, which he says the group cannot afford. He wants the airline to reduce its fleet from 344 jets to about 250 to increase profitability. Sir Stelios criticised the carrier in a statement announcing the reward, saying the company’s directors wanted to maintain the contract despite “evidence that this obligation to pay Airbus will drive easyJet into insolvency by December 2020”. The reward was issued in an attempt to “establish why easyJet directors still want to pursue” the Airbus contract, he said. EasyJet has consistently disputed Haji-Ioannou’s claims of wrongdoing on the part of its directors, and maintained the Airbus contract is sustainable.<br/>