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(Alliance News) - Budget airline easyJet PLC said Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Andrew Findlay will be stepping down from his role in May of next year.
Shares in the FTSE 100-listed airline jumped 12% in early trade on Tuesday to 625.20 pence each.
easyJet said Findlay will continue in the position as it begins the search for his successor.
Chief Executive Johan Lundgren added: "Since I joined in 2017, Andrew and I have worked extremely well together.
"As the longest standing member of the Airline Management Board, Andrew has and continues to provide solid financial steerage and guidance. This has been particularly so during recent months when he was quick to secure liquidity and deliver a significant reduction in cash burn."
Findlay said: "Although I have given notice to leave easyJet in a year's time, I remain fully committed to the business to support Johan and to ensure easyJet successfully weathers this unprecedented time for the airline industry.
"By the end of my notice period I will have been with this great company for almost 6 years and it will be the right time to pass the financial reins to someone who will help take easyJet into its next chapter."
Findlay also thanked easyJet shareholders for voting to keep him in his job at the airline's recent general meeting.
At the meeting, convened by disgruntled founder and largest shareholder Stelios Haji-Ioannou, roughly 58% of easyJet's shareholders voted against the resolutions to remove Chair John Barton, Lundgren, Findlay and Independent Non-Executive Director Andreas Bierwirth, with 42% in favour.
Haji-Ioannou termed the results of the meeting, held last Friday, as "voting fraud".
"The results constitute voting fraud as at least 15% of the shares held by the three "strawmen" - Invesco, 91 and Phoenix - are controlled by Airbus SE and were therefore "related parties" in this vote," Haji-Ioannou said in a statement on Friday.
Other than Haji-Ioannou, with a 34% stake, major easyJet shareholders include Invesco Ltd, with a 10% stake and Black Rock Inc, holding 5.0%, according to Morningstar.
Earlier this month, Haji-Ioannou alleged that three investors backing the airline's management are working on behalf of Airbus.
Without offering any specific evidence, he said Invesco, Ninety One UK Ltd and Phoenix Asset Management are trying to keep the company's board members in their jobs, so they can continue paying more money to Airbus. The three investors jointly own a 14% stake in easyJet.
The airline is also facing a potential GBP18 billion lawsuit over a customer data breach.
Last Tuesday, EasyJet had said that sensitive personal data of nine million customers had been exposed in a data breach. The GBP18 billion claim amounts to GBP2,000 per affected customer.
According to the law firm leading the lawsuit, the data breach itself occurred in January but despite notifying the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office at that time, easyJet waited four months to notify its customers.
By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com
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