EasyJet bidder is still offering less than a full ticket | Nils Pratley

I t’s an obvious tactic for a would-be bidder to deploy when its offers have been rejected three times by the target’s board of directors: go public with the proposed terms and hope the shareholders demand new talks. Castlelake’s playbook at easyJet is standard stuff and, since the “put up or shut up” bid deadline falls at end of this week, it had to try something. In its dream scenario, Stelios Haji-Ioannou would launch one of his old-style rockets at the easyJet board to shake things up. However, the airline’s founder and still 15% shareholder (with his family) has said nothing so far in support of either side. Given the radio silence from Monaco, one can understand the stock market’s scepticism on Castlelake’s chances. The US investment firm’s last offer, rejected on Sunday, was at 625p a share, or £4.7bn. The very wide gap to the market price for easyJet’s shares of 518p, up only 2% on Monday, says a shareholder uprising is hard to detect currently. The market’s assessment feels fair for two reasons. First, 625p does not feel close to a knockout price. It’s true, as Castlelake says, that easyJet’s shares haven’t traded at that level since early 2022 and were only 464p on the day before the Iran war. On the other hand, it’s not as if the airline is in crisis or in need of a saviour. It has merely underperformed Ryanair in financial terms for years, which is different, and its balance sheet is solid. …