Entrepreneur salutes serial entrepreneur, easyJet founder and fortune maker Stelios

EASYJET'S Stelios Haji-Ioannou has played his cards right. Entrepreneurs who start a business must do so with a personal pay day in mind. But the problem is selling out without the other outside shareholders or investors asking the inevitable question: 'What does he know that I don't know?'

I suspect Stelios can't believe his luck. When he floated easyJet, it soared to a value that exceeded his wildest dreams. For a shrewd businessman, it is too much of a temptation not to take a profit. The problem is how do you do it when you have made promises about how dedicated you will be for the wellbeing of the company in the future.

Stelios started easyJet with some of the family fortune, but there is nothing wrong with that. Too many times, the sons of successful businessmen don't turn out to have the same business brain as their dad, but in this case he has shown he can also do it. Over the past five years, quite a few million was injected to get the show on the road - and what a show it was. Any other person would shy away from a TV crew running a programme about the way airlines work. Not our Stelios. What might be perceived as corporate suicide to others he saw as good publicity. 'He's got to be nuts,' people said. But who's nuts now?

When Stelios realised he had a company worth far more than its real net asset value, he must have asked his advisers how he could cash in. This coming barely a year after the flotation, they must have had kittens. 'You can't do that,' they must have said. 'Why?' says Stelios. 'That's what it's all about, isn't it?'

But advisers will never let you down when there is a fat fee involved. They came up with a scheme to raise money for the company by issuing more shares and slipping in the odd 13m of the founder's shares at the same time. Last October, they did just that. Stelios sold 7% of the company for £48.5m. He got his dad's money back with change and the family still owns 58.5% of the company. At that time, he promised not to sell any more and assured shareholders this was not a 'sell and run' situation.

Hardly six months on, he says public company life is not for him. He is a serial entrepreneur, he wants to move on. Out goes the open-shirted founder and in comes the institutional figurehead chairman, Sir Colin Chandler. Meanwhile, Stelios wants a further £100m. The way this time is to bundle it in with a fund-raising exercise to buy Go, another low-cost airline, for £400m-£500m.

Funnily enough, today there's no criticism about the price easyJet wants to pay. British Airways is getting the flak because it sold Go for £110m just over a year ago. This is unfair. BA's board must have done the rounds before accepting 3i's deal. So the real question is why easyJet now thinks Go is worth £400m, when it would not top that bid.

EasyJet is now a real public company - God help it, and is driven by the institutions to expand and acquire. Low-cost airlines are the latest stock market fashion. Remember the Simpson show at Marconi when Iron Arnold left and all the cash he had amassed in the company was like a red rag to the bulls? It was blown in by pressure from the institutional brain surgeons. They wanted a new direction. Well they got that all right, down the drain.

You can see the culture at easyJet has changed already. I doubt if it was Stelios' own money, he would shell out £400m. The dotcom boom is over, as is telecoms, where can we blow our money next is the institutional question. Well it's low-cost airlines this year.

So here we go again with the advisers on another fat fee. They think it's a jolly good idea to buy something for £400m, that has done nothing spectacular in the past year, and could have been bought for £110m a year ago. Wacko chaps, where did you pick that up? Eton or Harvard? As far as Stelios is concerned, it's an even better idea to lob in another £100m for him at the same time. Dad must be sitting back in Greece, saying: 'That's my boy.'

Meanwhile, Go chief executive Barbara Cassani is, according to friends, devastated. 'Oh dear, I wanted to wait and take it public myself,' she says. 'I am disappointed that 3i wants to make a quick 300% profit in one year.' Talk about crocodile tears! Her 4% share in Go is going to bring her between £16m and £20m. In her wildest dreams, she expected to wait another three years for Go to get a stock market quote.

If you pull this one off, Stelios, I take my hat off to you. You have played the public company game very well. You've done nothing wrong and you've made us all proud of you. As for the institutions and underwriters, I hope you don't get lumbered with the stock. But if you do, it serves you right.

I am sure, just like with the dotcoms and telecoms, we will look back in two years and wonder why the company's market value equates to a round trip to Nice. Stelios, how about a new venture - Easy Floats?

Sir Alan Sugar has donated his fee to charity