Shareholders of discount airline EasyJet have voted to re-elect Mike Rake as chairman, months before his planned resignation, in a controversy-ridden general shareholder meeting that overrules weeks of strong public objections by company founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou.
Some 55.6 percent voted for Rake’s re-election amid calls from Haji-Ioannou to vote against him on claims that Rake, who plans to step down this summer, has ‘no long-term accountability for his actions’.
The shareholder meeting also approved, with 55.3 percent in favor, a pay package of £2 mn ($3 mn) for Carolyn McCall, the company’s CEO – a package Haji-Ioannou also voted against.
The company’s founder, who controls more than a third of EasyJet stock, has argued publicly over the votes since January, although he proposed no specific replacement for Rake. He said he personally has nothing against Rake but believed that EasyJet could benefit from renewing its chairman now, since the company is expected to enter the FTSE 100 index later this year.
Haji-Ioannou, who is known mainly by his first name, Stelios, also argued against company plans to buy new jets, saying that management should focus on delivering greater value to shareholders instead. A major jet purchase is ill-advised just before the resignation of the chairman, he says, arguing that, in any case, the airline’s Boeing 737s are better value.
Addressing the shareholder meeting, Rake insisted that the airline’s ‘high-growth’ strategy since 2009 has paid off and said ‘Carolyn and her management team have done an outstanding job in executing the company’s strategy, including utilizing the flexibility given by the framework agreement with Airbus in 2002 to continue the very successful move towards A320 aircraft’.
Rake, who has been chairman for three years and also sits on the board of Barclays, announced in January that he would step down in the middle of 2013 after repeated clashes with Haji-Ioannou. The founder called for Rake’s resignation last year, saying his integrity was compromised after Barclays was fined for rigging Libor.
After the vote for his re-appointment, Rake said the public criticism by Haji-Ioannou has the potential to damage the company’s reputation ahead of its entry into the FTSE 100. EasyJet shares closed down 1.9 percent at £9.96 in trading after the shareholder meeting.
‘I think it’s particularly important that any FTSE 100 company and all of its shareholders understand that [it] requires further emphasis on appropriate and constructive dialogue,’ Rake said after the vote, according to the Guardian. ‘In the interests of London’s reputation, and the company’s reputation, we should have constructive dialogue, and that dialogue should of course be in private in the first instance.’
