On Wednesday, EasyJet’s shareholders voted through Apollo’s £5.7 billion ($7.61 billion) takeover of the budget carrier, a key milestone for what ranks among the largest private-equity purchases of a European airline.
The company hopes to wrap up the transaction by the close of the first quarter of next year. At that point, EasyJet would delist from the London Stock Exchange, ending a run of more than 25 years as a listed company.
The deal still has to clear regulatory obstacles in the EU, where officials are getting ready to review airline ownership rules aimed at stopping outside investors from taking effective control of carriers.
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EasyJet is based in Britain but depends on EU licenses to run bases and routes across the bloc, which means most of its shares ought to sit with EU-based investors.
To stay within those rules, the airline suspended voting rights on certain shares owned by non-EU investors. It reported that EU persons held 35.07% of its shares at the time of Wednesday’s general meeting.
EasyJet is also up against union resistance. The European Works Council has cautioned that the deal’s structure could leave the airline less resilient and put staff at risk from unresolved issues.
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The buyout is one more in a run of London-listed firms snapped up in recent years, mostly by US-based private equity groups, as the FTSE 100 has traded at a discount to its American counterpart.
On the vote itself, EasyJet said 97.07% of the scheme shares cast were in favor, and 83.29% of voting shareholders backed the deal, which cleared the bar required to take the budget carrier private. Scheme shares are the ones being acquired under a court-approved scheme of arrangement.
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