Stelios grabs lion's share of airline

EASYJET founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou's privately-held easyGroup company took up most of the 26m shares made available in the budget airline's recent open offer and placing.

The 375p-a-share offer raised £93.3m, which the carrier intends to spend on new planes. EasyGroup bought 15.61m of the shares.

Under the terms of the offer, which closed on Tuesday, 6.5m shares were pre-emptively placed with institutions, and Haji-Ioannou's private companies pledged to underwrite 14m of the remaining 19.5m.

Those companies bought their 14m allocation and the remaining 1.6m available after only 3.6m shares, or 70.8% of the 5.5m in the open offer, were taken up by external investors.