Ryanair’s pugnacious boss has finally learnt one of life’s most valuable lessons — it pays to be nice.
Michael O’Leary, the motormouth boss of the no-frills airline, is sitting on a €50m (£44m) paper profit as a result of deciding to treat his customers better.
In 2014, O’Leary was handed options over 5m Ryanair shares, which vest in 2019 as long as he hits targets and remains at the company.
The options can be exercised at €8.35 a share. However, Ryanair shares hit a high of €18.68 last week after the company reported a pre-tax profit of almost €1.32bn for last year. The shares closed at €18.20 on Friday, putting a paper value of €91m on the options, almost €50m above their exercise price.
At the time the options were granted, Ryanair said it expected traffic to hit 120m customers by 2019, but it reached that number last year. The share price surge has coincided with Ryanair’s adoption of its “Always Getting Better” plan, which has included the introduction of allocated seating and allowing passengers to have a second carry-on bag.
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O’Leary decided to transform the airline’s image after realising it had “upset a significant proportion of our customer base”.
“It was the realisation that people are willing to pay a higher fare just to avoid us,” he told The Sunday Times last year.