Aer Lingus, Ireland's youngest public company, has, in the nearly 11 months since it was floated, undergone a turbulent journey the like of which none of its passengers would ever want to experience.
Our national flag carrier floated on the Irish and London stock exchanges on September 29th last, with shares trading at €2.20 apiece. The move raised €400 million for the company to use to expand its fleet and launch more routes.
Within six days, however, Ryanair had launched a dawn raid, buying a large chunk of the business and lodging an audacious €1.48 billion bid. This valued the shares at €2.80 each.
Ryanair's move completely blindsided Aer Lingus, its advisers, and the government, which had held on to a 25 per cent shareholding. Management immediately rejected the bid, and was backed in its stance by the government; the employee share ownership trust (Esot), which owns 12.6 per cent of the airline; its pilots, who bought more than 2 per cent of the business; and Denis O'Brien, who has bought a small shareholding in the company.
In June, the European Commission shot down Michael O'Leary's takeover bid, a decision that Ryanair has said it will appeal.
Ryanair's bid, however, forced Dermot Mannion to review the company's cost base. He subsequently drew up a plan called PCI-07, aimed at eliminating outdated work practices and payments, and at saving the company €20 million a year.
That put Aer Lingus on a collision course with the unions and, despite the intervention of the National Implementation Body, the Labour Relations Commission and the Labour Court, it has yet to strike an agreement with its main trade unions - Siptu, Impact and the Irish Airline Pilots' Association.
Even Mannion's plan to quit the Shannon-Heathrow route and move it to Belfast, where it is expected to generate more profits for the airline, has been criticised by O'Leary, the arch-capitalist, who wrote to Aer Lingus earlier this week, requesting that an extraordinary general meeting (egm) be held to vote on the decision to move the Heathrow slots.
On Thursday, Ryanair increased its stake in Aer Lingus from 25.2 per cent to 28 per cent, making life just that bit more uncomfortable for Mannion, even though acquiring the extra shares does not significantly alter O'Leary's ability to influence major decisions at the airline. Ryanair needed only a 25 per cent shareholding to block special resolutions by the company. As the last week has shown, Michael O'Leary is well positioned to cause mischief for Aer Lingus and cause endless difficulties for the Government.
In July, for example, Ryanair defeated a resolution at Aer Lingus's first agm that would have given Aer Lingus the power to raise money by issuing new shares without having to offer them to existing investors in the airline, which could have had the effect of diluting Ryanair's shareholding.
Almost 70 per cent of the business is now held by Ryanair, the government and the workers, and Mannion may have to put an inordinate amount of time-consuming effort into getting other shareholders to exercise their franchise - potentially even for routine resolutions that would pass as a matter of course in any other business.
Aer Lingus chairman John Sharman acknowledges that it is a far-from-ideal situation for the airline. "We're cognisant of the narrowness of the shareholder base and are looking at ways of trying to rectify that position," he says. "These things take time, but we are absolutely committed to increasing the shareholder base."