Ryanair issues 7-day ultimatum to Aer Lingus to clarify policy issues

RYANAIR has given Aer Lingus a seven-day ultimatum to reply to unanswered questions on policy, threatening to force an extraordinary general meeting if the deadline is not met.

On two occasions in the past month, Ryanair — the largest shareholder in Aer Lingus, holding a 29.8% stake — sent letters to its rival airline’s chairman, Colm Barrington, seeking a meeting to discuss three initiatives originally proposed by Ryanair, but claims that they have gone unanswered.

Ryanair yesterday said that it has sent further communication to Mr Barrington notifying him of its intention to requisition an EGM of Aer Lingus shareholders should he fail to reply within seven days.

Ryanair’s three initiatives include getting confirmation from Aer Lingus that it won’t make any additional payments to its defined contribution pension schemes without prior shareholder approval; a one-off dividend of 20c per share (amounting to a total of around €110 million) from Aer Lingus’s €900m-plus cash reserves; and an end to what it calls the “cover up” of the Deloitte/McCann Fitzgerald report into Aer Lingus’s recent €30m “leave and rehire” revenue penalty.

A Ryanair spokesperson said: “We regret Mr Barrington’s continuing failure to reply to our letters, while he presides over a share price which has collapsed from over €3 to under 70c in recent weeks.

“If Mr Barrington continues to ignore a 29% shareholder, then we will be left with no alternative other than to requisition an EGM — which any shareholder holding more than 10% is legally entitled to call — to see whether there is a majority of Aer Lingus shareholders who support Ryanair’s view that these proposals should be implemented in the interests of improving shareholder value and reversing the catastrophic collapse in Aer Lingus’s share price, which Mr Barrington and his board have presided over in recent years,” they added.

An Aer Lingus spokesperson could not be contacted.

Meanwhile, Ryanair also used yesterday to unveil its 46th European hub, at Wroclaw, Poland. The airline already flies to and from Poland but hasn’t had a base there until now.