The Apollo EasyJet takeover bid, pitched at £7.15 per share and valuing the carrier at £5.7 billion (approximately $7.65 billion), has thrown Europe’s airline M&A story wide open, upending an agreement EasyJet had reached with rival suitor Castlelake just days earlier.
EasyJet’s board said Apollo’s proposal delivered ‘a superior outcome’ for investors, and confirmed it is ‘no longer minded’ to accept Castlelake’s competing offer.
Apollo’s EasyJet Takeover Bid: What the Numbers Say
Castlelake had itself only just cleared the bar, agreeing a Reuters-confirmed valuation of £5.5 billion at £6.90 per share, a figure that had sent EasyJet shares to four-year highs on 7 July. That followed five separate approaches from Castlelake, the first four of which were rebuffed by EasyJet’s board.
Apollo now offers a further premium on top, and has given itself until 17:00 on 7 August to convert that proposal into a firm bid. Castlelake’s own deadline falls on 3 August, meaning the airline’s shareholders face a compressed few weeks in which one or both bidders must either commit or walk.
The backdrop to all this is a company under genuine financial strain. Yahoo Finance reports that EasyJet posted a headline loss after tax of £377 million for the six months to the end of March 2026, a deterioration of 27% year on year, even as revenue grew 12% to £3.95 billion. Higher fuel costs and the disruption from the Iran conflict weighed on the half-year result. It is precisely that depressed valuation that made EasyJet look like a target in the first place: the airline itself argued Castlelake’s opening gambit of 560p per share was exploiting a ‘temporarily depressed’ share price.
Since Castlelake’s interest became public in late May, EasyJet’s stock had already gained more than 50% before Apollo entered the picture, according to Reuters. Friday’s jump of nearly 15% pushed shares to around 673p, and the Apollo bid is now pitched at an 81% premium to EasyJet’s closing price of £3.94 on 28 May, the last day before takeover interest emerged.
Shareholders Get Options, but Passengers May Not Get Cheaper Fares
One feature of the Apollo approach is a sweetener for existing investors. Rather than a straight cash-out, shareholders would have the option to retain a stake in the company rather than being compelled to sell entirely, CryptoBriefing reports. That sits alongside an all-cash headline of £5.7 billion for those who prefer liquidity.
Any deal would take EasyJet private, delisting it from the London Stock Exchange (LSE), as IG has noted. There is also a structural complication: EU regulations require the carrier to remain majority-owned by EU citizens. Castlelake had proposed partnering with two European businessmen, Peter Bellew and Mark Breen, who would control an EU-based holding entity with majority ownership of the airline. Apollo has said it will take ‘all necessary steps’ to satisfy those conditions, though it has offered less detail on the mechanism.
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, pointed to EasyJet’s holidays business as the real prize for any acquirer. ‘Package holidays generate higher margins and more predictable revenues than airline tickets alone,’ she said. ‘For passengers, it’s very much business as usual for now, with flights, bookings and loyalty schemes unaffected while any deal works its way through the regulatory process.’
My read is that the holidays angle is the correct one to focus on. Conroy Gaynor, senior consumer analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, offered the necessary caveat: while Apollo has more explicitly backed EasyJet’s growth model, ‘the need to improve the airline margin suggests any success in lowering costs won’t necessary translate to lower fares’. Shareholders are winning this auction. Whether the benefit reaches anyone sitting in a middle seat remains a different question entirely.
Castlelake, which holds approximately 2.14% of EasyJet through the funds it manages, has not walked away quietly. A short statement reported by BBC News said it was ‘considering its options in respect of its possible offer’, which is rather more purposeful than declining to comment. The original BBC report on the Castlelake agreement had Castlelake owning that stake even before its bids began, giving it an incentive to stay in the room.
Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, put it plainly: ‘The spotlight now turns back to the original suitor to see if it will dig even deeper to beat Apollo. Shareholders will be putting their feet up and enjoying the ride.’
The ride may be brief. With Castlelake’s deadline four days earlier than Apollo’s, the first test of whether this becomes a proper bidding war arrives on 3 August.
