Elon MuskCEO of Tesla and president of X Corphas asked his followers on the social network X (owned by the group) the following question: “Should comprar Ryanair and put someone actually named Ryan in charge?”
All this, after the Irish airline’s account in X has expressed its refusal to install a Starlink Wi-Fi connection on its planes. And to this comment, Musk himself responded yesterday: “How much would it cost to buy you? I really want to put ‘a Ryan’ in charge of Ryan Air. It’s your destiny“.
Finally, the CEO of X Corp has published the poll for his followers to vote “Buy Ryan Air and restore Ryan as its rightful ruler” (Buy Ryan Air and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler).
With less than three hours left before the deadline to vote, the survey has received 897,530 responses.
And although it is the first time that Musk leaves his followers opine On the matter, there are several occasions on which he has raised the possibility of buying Ryanair in order to be able to fire the group’s CEO from the airlineMichael O’Leary, with whom he maintains an exchange of reproaches.
The origin of the dispute arose, according to Financial Timesfollowing a recent interview by O’Leary on Irish radio Newstalk where he declared that Musk “knows nothing about airplanes,” because a Wi-Fi connection would have a cost of 250 million dollars (213 million euros at the exchange rate) that its passengers would not be willing to assume. To this, Musk responded that O’Leary was a “complete idiot” and, since then, both (through social media accounts) have reproached each other through their social media profiles.
Finally, Musk has posed the question of whether or not to buy Ryanair to his followers. It should be remembered that this is the same strategy that it used before acquiring X (former Twitter) at a price of $54.20 per share. In 2022 he was forced to collect a large part of the 44 billion dollars with his own Tesla shares, and as soon as he had it in his hands, He fired his managers.
But the airline’s shares have barely fluctuated since this conflict began, explains the Financial Times. Ryanair, with a market capitalization of approximately 35 billion dollars and debt-free in the coming months, is regulated by European Union rules, which state that airlines based in the region must be majority owned by citizens of the area or of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein. And although the airline lifted these restrictions last year after discovering that more than half of its shareholders came from the approved list, it does maintain that “non-nationals” are still unable to vote the shares of their company.
