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One of the lucky winners of the GameStop meme stock craze is eyeing a board seat at one of America’s largest airlines. Bloomberg reports that Vladimir Galkin had talks with the carrier about potentially joining its directors, though it downplayed the conversations.
Having Galkin onboard in a more formal capacity would not be surprising. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, JetBlue said that he and his wife Angelica Galkin had acquired 10% of its stock. The filing said the pair had spent $213 million to do so.
Vladimir Galkin told Bloomberg that he had “no idea” regarding whether he wants to join JetBlue’s board. If he were join, he’d have investor company with a pair of directors installed by Carl Icahn, who disclosed his own sizable stake in the airline in February.
Icahn is well known as an activist investor, and when he bought into JetBlue he told regulators that he did it because he considered the airline “undervalued” even after a judge had blocked its proposed merger with Spirit Airlines. Vladimir Galkin, on the other hand, merely told regulators that he thought JetBlue “represents an attractive investment.”
JetBlue did not immediately return a request for comment.