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The former boss of Royal Mail is to step down as chair of easyJet’s boardroom pay committee amid a frantic reshuffling of directorships at the low-cost airline.
Sky News has learned that Moya Greene, who only took on the remuneration role last year, has signalled to John Barton, the company’s chairman, that she wants to hand it over.
Ms Greene is understood to be planning to remain on the easyJet board, which she joined in 2017.
Lygon Group, the headhunter, is said to have been given the mandate to find a new remco chair.
The assignment may be a tough one, with public company chief executives expected to see their pay packages significantly diminished for years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
It is the latest in a frenetic series of changes to the line-up in easyJet’s boardroom, which was placed under siege in March by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, its biggest shareholder.
Sir Stelios’s easyGroup demanded that the carrier he founded 25 years ago ditch a £4.5bn order with Airbus, and called an EGM to oust several directors – including Mr Barton.
Although Sir Stelios overwhelmingly lost the vote, easyJet’s board has since dismantled itself.
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In the last three weeks, the company’s finance chief has resigned anyway, along with two non-executive directors, including deputy chairman Charles Gurassa.
EasyJet has also announced the deferral of part of the Airbus order.
Last week, Sir Stelios sold a chunk of shares in the airline for the first time since 2015.
The disposal took the entrepreneur’s stake down to just under 33%.
It came on the day that the airline formally launched a joint legal action with Ryanair and British Airways’ parent company, International Airlines Group, to force the government to scrap its 14-day quarantine for passengers arriving in the UK.
Like other carriers, easyJet has announced plans to axe thousands of jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sir Stelios has publicly predicted that the company will go bust unless it cancels the Airbus order.
The tycoon, who founded easyJet in 1995 before floating it five years later, has offered a £5m ‘bounty’ for information from a whistle-blower that leads to the order being cancelled.
EasyJet, which is due to announce half-year results next week, declined to comment.
© Sky News 2020
