Elon Musk is considering buying Ryanair to fire its CEO
The world's richest man is asking on social media whether he should buy the airline after O'Leary declined to sign up for its Starlink satellite internet service.
BarcelonaTesla CEO and X Corp chairman Elon Musk, owner of the former Twitter social network, has launched a full-blown war with Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary. The world's richest man is furious that O'Leary ruled out installing Starlink satellite internet's Wi-Fi connection on planes. Musk has taken to social media to ask if he should buy Ryanair to fire O'Leary. He did so through a poll titled "Should I buy Ryanair and put someone who's actually named Ryan in charge?" This is the same strategy, or a very similar one, to the one Musk used when he wanted to buy X, which he ultimately did: he acquired the social network for around $44 billion. Financial TimesIt all started with an interview on Irish radio station Newstalk, where O'Leary declared that Musk "knows nothing about airplanes." He added that this high-speed satellite connection would cost $250 million (€213 million), which his passengers wouldn't be willing to pay.
Reproaches
In response, Musk called O'Leary an "idiot." And this was just the beginning of a tense relationship. Since then, the exchanges on social media between the man appointed by US President Donald Trump to implement spending cuts—who ultimately left the administration—and the controversial CEO of the low-cost airline have been relentless. True to his showman persona, O'Leary, who thrives on controversy, has called a press conference for this Wednesday to respond to Musk.
Ryanair has a market capitalization of around $35 billion and will be debt-free in a few months. European Union (EU) regulations stipulate that airlines based in the region must be majority-owned by citizens of the EU or Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, or Liechtenstein. This led Ryanair to block UK citizens from buying shares after Brexit.
