Apollo won easyJet by 25p, after Castlelake spent ten weeks setting the price.
The board called 625p an attempt to buy the airline on the cheap. The winning number was 715p, and the firm that found it is not the one paying it.
Castlelake made five offers for easyJet. Apollo made one that mattered.
The formal end came on Thursday, when Castlelake told the London Stock Exchange that it does not intend to make an offer for the airline, giving no reason. That leaves Apollo’s recommended offer of £7.15 per share standing, roughly £5.7 billion, or $7.7 billion, per FlightGlobal, a 54% premium to the closing price on 27 February. easyJet shares rose about 3% on the confirmation, and completion is pencilled in for the end of the first quarter of 2027, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals, per Aviation24.
The ladder deserves recording, because the ladder is the whole story. Castlelake approached in late May at 560p and was rejected. It came back at 600p. Rejected. Then 625p, which the board dismissed as an attempt to buy the airline “on the cheap”. Then 650p, rejected on 25 June, although this time the board extended the deadline and opened the data room a crack. By 5 July the board was minded to recommend 690p. Three days later Apollo appeared at 715p, and by 10 July it had an agreement in principle. Castlelake, having spent ten weeks and five bids establishing exactly what easyJet’s board would accept, declined to go higher and went home.
Our read: Castlelake ran the auction and Apollo won it. Ten weeks of bidding against a board with real reasons to say no produced the sharpest price discovery European aviation has seen in years, and the output was a number Apollo simply paid, 25p, or about 3.6%, above the level the board was already minded to recommend. The most expensive due diligence in European aviation was performed by the loser.
On that premium: 54% is measured against 27 February, a date chosen because it precedes the escalation of the Middle East conflict that knocked airline stocks over. Reference dates are selected, not observed. Against the £4 the London market put on this airline in May, as we noted when the shootout began, 715p is an uplift of nearly 80%. Against what the board itself argued in September 2021, when it spurned Wizz Air’s all-stock approach and raised £1.2 billion from its own shareholders instead, it is less a premium than an apology, five years late, with interest.
