EasyJet's Stelios takes off early

STELIOS Haji-Ioannou has revealed that he will depart sooner than expected from easyJet - but went on to soothe investor fears that the wheels may be coming off the budget airline's spectacular success story.

Following investor worries that he had been running easyJet, the airline he founded seven years ago, as his own personal fiefdom, Stelios earlier this year said he would step down as chairman at the company's next annual meeting in March.

However, he said he wanted to focus on his loss-making internet cafés and car rental business and revealed he is branching out into the world of the silver screen with the launch of easyCinema. To these ends, he is bringing forward his departure to 26 November, the date of easyJet's results for its full year to the end of September.

EasyJet's preliminary results are being announced a full month later than expected, indicating how complicated the business has become since the completion in August of its £258m takeover of rival Go.

But in a statement to the Stock Exchange, Stelios played down fears the airline might miss City profit forecasts of 20% growth in earnings per share because of the complexity of integrating Go and easyJet's crew rostering chaos last month, which hit hundreds of flights and tens of thousands of passengers.

Market jitters have seen easyJet shares more than halve over the past four months to even below the level of the deeply discounted 265p-a-share rights issue - against the prevailing 460p - which helped pay for the Go acquisition. Today the shares bounced off their 12-month low, up 22p to 266p.

'The punctuality of the flying programme is back to normal levels - 70% within 15 minutes and 92% within one hour,' said Stelios. 'Everything I hear leads me to be confident that full-year results will be in line with market expectations.'

Stelios, who with his brother and sister continues to control 46.4% of easyJet, said he wanted to go earlier to give new chairman Sir Colin Chandler a full run at the next financial year as well as 'rather selfishly to free up my time for my newer ventures'.

He continued: 'As a result of concentrating my efforts on my newer business over the past year I am pleased to announce that easyInternet Cafe has turned the corner and I am looking forward to helping it grow into a substantial business in the next two to three years.

'EasyCar is on track for an Initial Public Offering at the end of 2004 and I am also working on a new start-up, easyCinema.'