Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has given a timetable for his departure, with the famously foul-mouthed airline boss planning to hand over to a “nicer” successor by 2035.
The 64-year-old was in talks to extend his contract for “three to five years” beyond its current end in 2028, he told the Financial Times. Mr O’Leary’s existing “golden handcuffs” deal promises a €100 million payout if he hits certain targets.
Mr O’Leary said he should finally head for the exit in “five to 10 years”, adding: “I don’t want to hang around till 96 like [Warren] Buffett.”
While he has speculated before about retirement – quipping he wanted to stay working until the last of his teenage children had left for university in 2029 – this is the first time Mr O’Leary has laid out a detailed timetable for his departure.
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“My contract runs out in ’28,” he said. “We’re in talks at the moment about extending that. In ’28 I’ll be 67. I can’t see any reason not to do another three- to five-year period of time, but to my mind, I suspect we’re coming to the end of it at that stage.”
Mr O’Leary added: “In an ideal world, we would have a modest interregnum ... You would announce this is the next group CEO, and I would stay around for two years to train them up.
“Taking me out at some point in the next five to 10 years would give Ryanair the opportunity to be a little bit softer and a little bit nicer,” he said. “Ryanair would be better off if they didn’t have someone who was always shouting and swearing and actively lighting fires.”
It is not clear that O’Leary believes a diplomatic approach is better. Only last month, during the company’s earnings call, he laid into “bullshit regulations invented by idiots in the European Parliament” and UK chancellor Rachel Reeves for “taxing the shit out of everything that moves”.
His publicity-seeking comments have allowed the company to generate headlines while keeping marketing costs low, such as the 2009 suggestion that Ryanair could start charging passengers to use toilets.
Mr O’Leary joined Ryanair in the late 1980s to work for founder Tony Ryan, and rose to become chief executive in 1994.
During his tenure, Ryanair has grown to become Europe’s largest airline, carrying more than 200 million passengers a year across the region and north Africa.
He oversaw much of the business before taking on the company’s official leadership, and has been instrumental in shaping its culture, especially its “maniacal” focus on costs, and knack of attracting media coverage.
Mr O’Leary’s original model for casting Ryanair as a zero-frills carrier, closer to a coach service than a traditional airline, stems from Southwest Airlines in the US. Its former chief Herb Kelleher ran the business until he was 70.
On earnings calls, Mr O’Leary has begun talking up the potential of other managers in the business to reassure investors that Ryanair has a strong bench of potential replacements.
“Succession is always a risk,” he told the FT. “There’s no point in pretending otherwise. If I take the top tier of management, we’re all in our early 60s. We have the second tier of management in their early to mid 40s.”
Some of the senior leaders “may say they have had enough in ’28. By the time the second tier are in their mid 40s to early 50s, that’s when they should be taking over.”
He added: “If I were to die tomorrow – and we’ve had this discussion on the board – the senior team can clearly mind the business for the next year or so, but the next level down, who are in their early to mid 40s, they don’t know any other way to run a business.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited
