Stelios Haji-Ioannou

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Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou

Stelios
Born: July 18, 1950 (age 56)
Greece
Occupation: easyGroup
Net worth: £270 million
Spouse: none
Children: none

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, City Unversity, 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 as well as 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 availability 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 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 criticisedBBC 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 trumpeted 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". BBC

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.

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[edit] Personal

Stelios Haji-Ioannou was born in Athens to Cypriot parents, Loucas and Nedi. He has an older brother (Polys) and a younger sister (Clelia). Both are shareholders in some of Stelios' ventures. Stelios himself is unmarried and has no children.

[edit] History

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 acquitted, and the case was thrown out by the Italian courts three times, lastly by the Italian Supreme Court. Source, The Observer Joanna Walters Sunday April 21, 2002.

[edit] References

    [4] Observer News Item

    [edit] External links

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