Apollo gatecrashes easyJet sale with surprise £5.7bn takeover offer - business live

The board of easyJet has given the green light to a possible £5.7bn offer from the US private equity firm Apollo, as the low-cost airline becomes the subject of a surprise bidding war. The company’s board said on Friday that it was “minded to recommend” the potential all-cash offer, which values the business at £7.15 a share, to shareholders. Earlier this week, easyJet’s board agreed “in principle” to accept a £6.90 deal from Castlelake , after the US private equity firm upped its offer for the fifth time. However, analysts said that the offer, worth £5.5bn , undervalued easyJet. US private equity firm Apollo enters bidding war for easyJet with £5.7bn offer. The French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel has become Vodafone’s largest shareholder after buying a 16% stake for £4.4bn. On Friday, the Emirati telecoms group e&, which first took a stake worth £3.3bn in Vodafone in 2022 , announced the sale of its entire shareholding for 112.5p a share. Niel, who founded the telecoms company Iliad, has bought the stake through his family investment vehicle Vega at a 15% premium to Vodafone’s share price on Thursday. French billionaire becomes Vodafone’s largest shareholder with £4.4bn stake. A passenger on a Ryanair flight was reportedly almost sucked out of a window after it shattered in mid-air during a journey from Greece. The man was said to have been sucked out of his seat into the plane’s slipstream and hung headfirst out of the window after an engine failure resulted in parts smashing the acrylic window, according to local reports. The passenger, said to be a 61-year-old Serbian, was saved from being completely sucked out of the Boeing 737 because his wife “held him by the legs”. Ryanair passenger almost sucked out of shattered window during flight.