Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary to choose his successor by 2035

Kenneth Fox

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has given a timetable for his departure, with the sometimes-controversial airline boss planning to hand over to a “nicer” successor by 2035.

The 64-year-old was in talks to extend his contract for “three to five years” beyond its current end in 2028, he told the Financial Times. O’Leary’s existing “golden handcuffs” deal promises a €100 million payout if he hits certain targets.

As the Financial Times reports, O’Leary said he should finally head for the exit in “five to 10 years”, adding: “I don’t want to hang around till 96 like [Warren] Buffett.”

While he has speculated before about retirement — quipping he wanted to stay working until the last of his teenage children had left for university in 2029 — this is the first time O’Leary has laid out a detailed timetable for his departure.

In the year to date, Ryanair’s share price is up 54 per cent.

“My contract runs out in ’28,” he said. “We’re in talks at the moment about extending that. In ’28 I’ll be 67. I can’t see any reason not to do another three to five-year period of time, but to my mind, I suspect we’re coming to the end of it at that stage.”

O’Leary said: “In an ideal world, we would have a modest interregnum . . . You would announce this is the next group chief executive, and I would stay around for two years to train them up.”

“Taking me out at some point in the next five to 10 years would allow Ryanair to be a little bit softer and a little bit nicer,” he said. “Ryanair would be better off if they didn’t have someone who was always shouting and swearing and actively lighting fires.”

It is not clear if he believes a diplomatic approach is better. Only last month, during the company’s earnings call, he laid into “bullshit regulations invented by idiots in the European parliament” and UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves for “taxing the shit out of everything that moves”.

His publicity-seeking comments have allowed the company to generate headlines while keeping marketing costs low, such as the 2009 suggestion that Ryanair could start charging passengers to use toilets.

O’Leary joined Ryanair in the late 1980s to work for founder Tony Ryan and rose to become chief executive in 1994.

During his tenure, Ryanair has grown to become Europe’s largest airline, carrying over 200 million passengers annually across the region and North Africa.

He oversaw much of the business before taking on the company’s official leadership, and has been instrumental in shaping its culture, especially its “maniacal” focus on costs, and knack for attracting media coverage.

“Succession is always a risk,” he said before adding, “There’s no point in pretending otherwise. If I take the top tier of management, we’re all in our early sixties. We have the second tier of management in their early to mid-forties.”

Some of the senior leaders “may say they have had enough in ’28. By the time the second tier is in their mid-forties or early fifties, that’s when they should be taking over.”