Sir Stelios is blowing the whistle on corporate greed

The City is backing the huge bonuses the easyJet board has awarded itself against the wishes of the airline's founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. That is a big mistake, says Matthew Lynn.

It promises to be quite a fight. At the easyJet annual general meeting next week, the founder of the low-cost airline, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, is trying to overturn the bonuses that the board has awarded itself.

Right now, the City seems to be backing the board against Sir Stelios. That is a big mistake. Few genuine entrepreneurs have emerged from Britain in the last decade, but Sir Stelios is undoubtedly one. If the City doesn't support him, the institutional shareholders will look part of the same insider club as many CEOs. There will be a backlash and the City will only have itself to blame.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.