easyJet's founder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, has warned the LCC's board that he will push for the removal of its members unless they urgently cancel outstanding A320neo Family orders, Sky News has reported.
In a letter, the Greek-Cypriot entrepreneur told Chairman John Barton that he would call an extraordinary general meeting every seven weeks, seeking to remove one non-executive director at a time, unless his demands were met by April 1. His first target would be Andreas Bierwirth.
The founder, who together with his family owns a third of easyJet's shares, said that retaining the order under the current business environment was "simply shareholder value-destroying". He underlined that even after the resumption of operations, easyJet will likely remain loss-making and the additional payments to Airbus could lead to its insolvency.
"If it transpires that a single penny from the company has been paid to Airbus between the grounding of the fleet and the date of the insolvency or any equity-raising which would prevent insolvency, I will personally sue all the easyJet directors for gross negligence and for defrauding easyJet's creditors with the favouring of one creditor (Airbus with dubious rights to these monies) over all others," Haji-Ioannou said.
Haji-Ioannou said that while he did not expect the airline to formally cancel the order by April 1, he would demand it at least appointed a legal advisor to start the process.
The founder said he would be willing to participate in any new share issuance to provide additional capital to the LCC.
easyJet has 123 A320neo and thirty A321neo on order from Airbus. Thus far, thirty-four A320neo and eleven A321neo have been delivered as of February 29.
The UK-headquartered LCC grounded its entire fleet on March 30, with no set date for the resumption of operations.