ITV is poised to anoint the easyJet boss Dame Carolyn McCall as its new chief executive. The 55-year-old, who has run the airline since 2010, will replace Adam Crozier, who stood down last month.
ITV’s raid on the easyJet boardroom — which could be unveiled as soon as tomorrow — comes at a time of growing turbulence for British airlines.
The plunge in the pound since the Brexit vote has inflated carriers’ fuel bills and made foreign trips more costly for Britons. There are also fears flights to the Continent could be suspended if the UK fails to strike a deal with Brussels on the aviation industry.
McCall, pictured above, joined easyJet seven years ago. Since then, its market value has more than trebled to £5.6bn. She was paid £1.5m last year, compared with Crozier’s £3.4m.
At ITV, McCall will also face an industry in the midst of great change. Britain’s largest free- to-air commercial broadcaster has been hit with a slowdown in advertising income and is being challenged by streaming services such as Netflix.
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In response, ITV has bulked up its production arm. McCall and the ITV chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette are expected to continue buying smaller production houses.
McCall, a former chief executive of Guardian Media Group, has previously served as an independent director at Lloyds bank and Tesco. In 2008 she resigned from the supermarket’s board after it sued The Guardian for libel.