Stelios Haji-Ioannou

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. 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 Cass Business School. He was later awarded four honorary doctorates from Cass 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. 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 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. 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.

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

In the 2006 Birthday Honours, Haji-Ioannou received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to entrepreneurship".

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 quit the board of EasyJet, in order to attempt to force the management of the company to abort their expansion plans.

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.

He was among the benefactors of the "Make a WISH" charity event held in Monaco in June 2015, organized by the Embassy of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to Serbia.

In 2018, he filed a infringement claim against Netflix over their show "Easy" in a UK court, saying that use of the name breaches its European trademarks.

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.

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