Good morning and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy
A surprise corporate twist this morning: the US private equity firm Apollohas agreed to buy the airline easyJetin a £5.7bn deal, beating a rival bid for the company by Castlelake
EasyJet has reached an agreement in principle for an offer of £7.15 per share, and has said this morning that its board is inclined to recommend the deal to shareholders
US private equity firm Apollo enters bidding war for easyJet with £5.7bn offer
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The airline had been set to be taken private in a £5.5bn deal with the US private credit group Castlelake, which had until 3 August to make its formal offer
But easyJet said in a statement this morning:
The proposed cash offer delivers a superior outcome for easyJet shareholders by providing a higher cash value than Castlelake’s latest proposal of £6.90 per easyJet share, submitted on 4 July 2026
Apollo’s offer represents a 22% premium against easyJet’s closing share price yesterday, and an 81% premium compared with its price the day before the offer period for the bid from Castlelake
Apollo also added that it would agree to take “all necessary steps” to satisfy any EU local ownership rules. Current regulation requires European airlines to be majority owned by a European entity, Castlelake had planned around this by intending to bring two Irish airline executives on board
Elsewhere today, Asian stock markets have been largely mixed – the Japanese Nikkei and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng are both up by about 1%. The South Korean Kospi is yet again the stand out, up by almost 3%. On mainland China however, shares are slipping – the SSE Composite is down by 0.3%
The agenda
7am BST: EU consumer price index and harmonised consumer price index
11am BST: Delta Air Lines earnings
