Stelios Haji-Ioannou

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou (Στέλιος Χατζηιωάννου; born 14 February 1967) is a Greek Cypriot entrepreneur.

Born into a wealthy ship-owning family, he is best known for founding the low-cost airline easyJet and the Stelmar shipping line with start-up funds provided by his father, Loucas.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou was born in Athens on 14 February 1967, the second of three children of Nedi (née Potsos) and Loucas Haji-Ioannou.

He has an elder brother, Polys, and a younger sister, Clelia.

Both of his siblings have a large stake in easyJet.

His father's family originates from the village of Pedoulas high in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus, while his mother is from the village of Laneia at the foot of the mountains.

The tanker, M/T Haven, was an elderly vessel, formerly the Amoco Haven, sister ship of the ill-starred Amoco Cadiz that had foundered in 1978.

Haji-Ioannou was accused of poor maintenance and charged in Italy with manslaughter, in addition to intimidating and attempting to bribe witnesses.

Haji-Ioannou blamed the accident on an error by one of the surviving crew members.

He and his father were acquitted by the jury.

Subsequent civil demands for compensation were also dismissed by the courts.

After his secondary education in Athens, he studied economics at the London School of Economics, graduating with a BSc in 1987.

He went on to obtain an MSc in Shipping, Trade & Finance from Bayes Business School.

He was later awarded four honorary doctorates from Bayes Business School, Liverpool John Moores University, Newcastle Business School, and Cranfield University.

A self-labelled "serial entrepreneur", Haji-Ioannou started working in 1988 for his father's already successful shipping business, Troodos Shipping Co Ltd. At 25, Haji-Ioannou received £30 million from his father, that he used to set up his own shipping company, Stelmar Shipping.

In April 1991, a Troodos-owned VLCC oil tanker suffered a disaster that resulted in six deaths and spilt about 50,000 tons of crude oil into the sea, becoming arguably the Mediterranean's worst-ever ecological disaster.

easyJet's foundation in 1995 marked the beginning of a series of ventures marketed under the "easy" brand, managed by easyGroup and chaired by Haji-Ioannou.

Haji-Ioannou started easyJet in 1995 when he was 28 years old, running a service between Luton and Scotland.

In 2000, easyJet PLC was partially floated on the London Stock Exchange.

Haji-Ioannou floated the company on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001.

In 2005, Stelmar Shipping was sold to the OSG Group for approximately $1.3 billion.

In 2009, Haji-Ioannou brought proceedings in London's High Court over Ryanair adverts which appeared in The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and on Ryanair's website in January and February.

The adverts featured a picture of Haji-Ioannou in the style of Pinocchio and referred to him as "easyJet's Mr Late Again".

The case was eventually settled out of court, with Haji-Ioannou receiving an official apology from the airline and the sum of £50,100, which Haji-Ioannou announced he would donate to his philanthropic foundation.

In 2010, Haji-Ioannou left the board of EasyJet, in order to attempt to force the management of the company to abort their expansion plans.

In an interview with Management Today, he said: 'EasyJet is seen as a huge success, which I'm happy about, because I own the brand.

But easyJet is a publicly listed company.

The share price has gone up and down as it's got bigger and things have happened – but overall, really it's gone sideways.'

He then went on to say: 'Basically, it's created no shareholder value for 10 years.'

In September 2011 it was reported that Haji-Ioannou was working on Fastjet, a new low-cost airline serving routes within Africa, as part of a joint venture with Lonrho plc.

The airline started operations on 29 November 2012 with Airbus A319 aircraft.

In 2013, Haji-Ioannou said he had become "increasingly concerned" at easyJet's expansion plans.

He announced that he sold 200,000 easyJet shares in protest against plans to buy more planes, while his siblings have done the same with their shares.

easyJet PLC is one of Europe's largest airlines with a fleet of 323 aircraft carrying over 88.5m passengers annually (2018 figures).

Other travel/leisure-related businesses include:

He and his family remain its largest single shareholders (34%) in the airline, capitalised at £4.17bn as of 9 May 2019.

Haji-Ioannou conducts business via his private investment vehicle, the easyGroup, which owns the 'easy' brand and licenses it to the various 'easy'-branded ventures, including the airline.

Haji-Ioannou continues to extend his business interests, mainly in the field of travel and leisure by encouraging entrepreneurs to adopt the "easy" brand for their companies.

In April 2020, Haji-Ioannou publicly called for the removal of EasyJet PLC CEO Johan Lundgren and chairman John Barton over what he describes as a "deliberate mistake" in not terminating a £4.5 billion order for 107 planes from Airbus.

Haji-Ioannou has lived in Monaco since his family moved there when he was a teenager.