Sir easygoing

Damian Reilly meets Stelios Haji-Ioannou, serial entrepreneur and founder of low cost carrier easyJet.

Stelios, Sir Stelios to you, actually, is aware of his limitations. "One thing I cannot do," he says between mouthfuls with a finger in the air, "is predict the future. That, I cannot do."

False modesty, surely? Afterall, he has certainly made a better fist of doing exactly that than the rest of us. 40 years old now, at the tender age of 25 in 1992, he started the Greek shipping business that eight years later he floated on the New York stock exchange. In 2005, he saw it sold for a cool $1.3 billion.

In 1995, at the age of 28, he famously started low cost European airline easyJet. In the last eight years alone the company has not only listed on the London stock exchange, but has grown from a 16 plane outfit, to an operation boasting a fleet of over 160 aircraft. I wish I was as bad at predicting the future as him.

I was going to save the question until the end, but seeing as we're already on the subject of the future, I slip it in early. How would he like to be remembered?

Masticating slowly, he thinks it over. "I try to be nice," he says. "I want to be remembered as a nice guy. I don't want to be remembered as being particularly successful, because I am not."

I come close to spitting out my drink. Hang on, you're not successful? You're a self-made billionaire! Of course you're successful.

For a moment this big, friendly, Greek man looks embarrassed. He grins a little sheepishly. "I am not self-made," he says. "I had a rich father. And I am not a billionaire, unless you are counting in a currency like drachmas." Now he is laughing.

If that's the case, then he has had a bad year, or the Sunday Times newspaper has some facts to check. In 2007, that paper's famous Rich List put Stelios Haji-Ioannou's wealth at ₤1.2 billion, which makes him the 49th wealthiest man in Britain. Even if he does not consider himself to be successful, most would.

Another tack, then. When did you realise you were different to the other kids?

"I don't think I am that different, actually. I was born lucky. Because I was born into a Greek shipping family, so from day one I knew that I didn't have to work for a living, which is a blessing and a curse. I was different in the sense that instead of sitting on my backside and staying within the shipping business, I wanted to make a difference in peoples' lives. So I convinced my father to give me some money, and I started easyJet.

"The main point is that I had the tenacity, if you like, to leave a peaceful existence in Greece and go to a place that very few people have heard of called Luton airport in London. Back then, it was even less glamorous. I worked hard, but I was lucky to be able to get the money from my father. I was in the right place at the right time, and created this airline."

Which brings us neatly to the eureka moment. How did someone for whom money was no object, for whom the only way to travel was presumably in first class, hit upon an idea that would prove to be so popular with the cost-conscious middle classes?

"To be honest, I was looking around for something outside of the shipping industry. Amateur psychologists would say I was trying to prove myself to my father. I didn't just want to be a rich Daddy's son. Basically, I was looking at aviation, and I went to the States, and I came across Southwest airlines. Someone in Boeing told me about it. So again, it was a lucky moment, because they are the prototype: Southwest airlines is the original low cost airline. I saw it and said: this is it. This is missing in Europe. I decided that to make money I had to design something for the many and not for the few."

Was Ryan air, easyJet's main rival, in operation back then? "Ryan air was around ten years before us, but in a different model, and they were losing money. At about the same time as we started, they changed, and the two companies have been competing with each other and leapfrogging each other ever since."

But how does Stelios, who seems such a gentle soul at the lunch table, get on with Ryanair's famously sweary Irish CEO Michael O'Leary? Does he like him?

"Not really. He is very arrogant. It is difficult to be friendly with someone who is so arrogant. I think the guy is arrogant because he is successful, but at the same time you have to keep things in perspective and remember that there is an element of luck in all of this. Without your people, and without your customers, you are nothing. He is even rude to his customers. How can you be rude to your customers? But, anyway, we are not here to talk about him."

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