Castlelake LP made public its £4.74 billion ($6.3 billion) takeover proposal for easyJet on Monday after the British budget airline's board rejected three separate bids, with the Minneapolis-based investment firm now appealing directly to shareholders ahead of a regulatory deadline.
EasyJet's board said it received Castlelake's latest offer — 625 pence per share in cash — on June 20 and rejected it on June 21, describing it as "highly opportunistic" and an attempt to acquire the airline "on the cheap." The board said the proposal "still fundamentally undervalues easyJet and its prospects." Two previous proposals, at 560 pence and 600 pence per share respectively, were also unanimously rejected.
Citing easyJet's refusal to hold substantive discussions, Castlelake chose to disclose the third proposal openly so that shareholders could weigh its terms before the U.K. Takeover Panel's June 26 deadline, at which point the firm must commit to a formal offer or abandon its pursuit.
Measured against easyJet's closing price of 394.20 pence on May 28 — the last trading session before Castlelake disclosed it was considering a bid — the 625 pence offer works out to a premium of approximately 59%. EasyJet stock rose more than 5% on Monday to around 530 pence, according to Reuters, but remained well below the offer price.
To satisfy E.U. ownership rules mandating that European airlines remain under the majority control of E.U. nationals, Castlelake designed the transaction around a bidding vehicle in which its own stake would be capped at 49%, with E.U. nationals holding the remaining 51%. Two aviation veterans have been brought on as E.U.-national partners: Peter Bellew, who served as chief operating officer at both easyJet and Ryanair, and Mark Breen, who heads Oneiros Aerospace, an aviation consultancy, according to Bloomberg. EasyJet called the proposed ownership structure "opaque" and said it provided no basis for assessing the deliverability of the deal. The board also cited "considerable reservations about the elevated leverage and overall conditionality" of the proposal.
Going into the bid process, Castlelake — an asset manager overseeing roughly $37 billion — was already an easyJet investor, with approximately 2.14% of the airline's shares sitting within the portfolios of funds it runs, as Quartz reported when the firm first disclosed its interest in late May. At the time, easyJet stock had fallen roughly 22% since the start of 2026, pressured by higher fuel costs tied to the outbreak of war involving Iran.
EasyJet's board said it remains focused on its medium-term target of delivering more than £1 billion in annual pretax profit and advised shareholders to take no action at this time.