Stelios Haji-Ioannou
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou (
Greek Στέλιος Χατζηιωάννου, born
February 14 1967, in
Athens,
Greece) is a
Monaco based entrepreneur of
Greek-Cypriot origin. He is the sole owner of
easyGroup, which formerly owned easyJet Airline Company PLC before its merger with Go, the operator of
easyJet airline. He prefers to be known simply by his first name, Stelios (see[
1]), but has often been dubbed 'Big Stel' by the British tabloid press. He is a popular, colourful and occasionally controversial figure.
Stelios graduated from Rainham Mark Grammar School and the
London School of Economics. He then went on to study for an MSc in Shipping, Trade & Finance at
Cass Business School, in London. He started by founding the shipping company
Stelmar in
1992 with a loan from his father. With the success of the company he looked at starting an airline; after a visit to the
United States, inspired by
Ryanair and
Southwest and
Virgin Atlantic he started
easyJet, a
"budget" airline in 1995 again with an investment by his family.
The airline was an enormous success due to the availabilty of second hand aircraft and cheap aviation fuel, easyJet being one of the major leaders in the European cheap flights boom of the
1990s. Stelios expanded his interests with the formation of the easyGroup in
1998. Through easyGroup he owns or part-owns a
range of companies, covering a range of activities such as
internet cafés,
credit card finance (the easy credit card has now closed),
car rental which has become an agency and intermediary for car rental companies,
cinemas which have closed due to resistance from distributors to the concept of ultra-cheap ticketing[
2],
buses and
hotels. In August 2005 the easyGroup opened their only low-cost budget hotels in London, although this was met with amusement in the media as many of the rooms had no windows and toilet facilities sited next to beds. All follow the "easy" approach of few "frills" and following
yield management principles.
According to a recent article on This is Money[
3], Stelios had made plans to launch a company providing cheap funerals. Stelios had said that the idea had reached the planning stage before it was dropped.
Alongside his public popularity he has also occasionally been criticised
BBC for a policy of attempting to claim all company names/web URL's containing the word "easy" for his group of companies, even when the name was already in use. His critics point out that unlike brand names such as Virgin, Easy is a quality that most businesses would aspire to be and it is unfair to hijack the name from the English business lexicon. They also claim that other than easyJet Sir Stelios' other enterprises lack the substance trumpted by the press. Karl Kahn, the rightful owner of an Easypizza brand established 7 years before Sir Stelios launched his pizza shop selling cooked from frozen pizzas commented 'We knew we were in the right, we'd had the name for longer and had no intention to copy them or anything about them' after easyPizza were forced to drop their aggressive case which caused the small business owner to go into debt to defend himself. He described the year spent defending the bullying approach by easyGroup as 'an absolute nightmare'.
BBCIn reference to the constant court battles of Stelios and the easyGroup, a member of the public has hit back while supporting small businesses, and created the easyBully square on
The One Million Masterpiece, stating that "a fat man cannot own the English language".[
4]
In
2000, easyJet floated on the
London Stock Exchange, and Stelmar floated on the
New York Stock Exchange the following year. His family fortune is estimated at
£727 million. He was ranked 80th in the
Sunday Times Rich List 2006. On
17 June 2006, it was announced that he will be made a
Knight Bachelor. He lives in
Monaco,
London and
Athens.
A popular figure, his recent
knighthood was met with both approval and controversy as he is a
tax exile and therefore usually only entitled to an
honorary knighthood.
Stelios Haji-Ioannou was born in Athens to Cypriot parents, Loucas and Nedi. He has an older brother (Polys) and a younger sister (Clelia), who is a plastic surgeon. Both are shareholders in some of Stelios' ventures. Stelios himself is unmarried and has no children. According to the
IMDb and some other internet sites he is dating and about to marry Australian singer
Dannii Minogue, however, no official annoncements have been made.
Stelios attended Doucas Greek High School in Athens and took two A-levels. In 1984, he moved to London to study at the London School of Economics where he got a Bsc in 1987 and in the following year he got a Msc in Shipping, Trade and Finance from the City University Business School. He then went into his father's business, Troodos Shipping. In April 1991, a Troodos tanker, the Haven, exploded, killing 5 crew members and creating an oil slick along the Italian coast. Stelios was charged by the Italian courts with personal responsibility, but was aquitted, and the case was thrown out by the Italian courts three times, lastly by the Italian Supreme Court. Source, The Observer Joanna WaltersSunday April 21, 2002.
[
5] Observer News Item
*
Easy.Com - EasyGroup homepage
*
Stelio's personal page*
Sir Stelios News*
Profile in 'The Observer'
