Ryanair Legal Action Against IFSRA (Ireland)

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Ryanair News

News Release
18.02.08

Ryanair Legal Action Against IFSRA Listed for Commercial Court

Ryanair, Ireland’s largest airline (and a 29% shareholder in Aer Lingus) today (Monday, 18th February 2008) sought permission to file a case against IFSRA (The Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority) for its failure to launch any investigation of what Ryanair believes was the blatant abuse by Aer Lingus of Irish Stock Exchange listing rules and the repeated transmission of price sensitive information by Aer Lingus to one large shareholder (the Minister for Transport) in the run up to the closure of Aer Lingus’s Shannon base which was announced on 7th August 2007.

Ryanair’s case rests upon the published report of the Secretary General of the Department of Transport (Ms Julie O’Neill) which recorded a series of meetings and briefings between senior Aer Lingus executives and this one large shareholder (the Government) during the period from 13th June 2007 right up to 3rd August 2007. This report confirms that a series of officials in both the Department of Transport and the Department of the Taoiseach were briefed by Aer Lingus in June and July last on their plans to close the Shannon base and transfer these slots to Belfast.

Speaking today, a Ryanair Spokesman said:

“There can be little doubt that this was both market sensitive and price sensitive information. There can also be no doubt that these secret advance briefings to one large Aer Lingus shareholder (while all other shareholders were kept in the dark) was an abuse by Aer Lingus of Stock Exchange rules.

“Ryanair wrote to IFSRA asking that this apparent breach of Stock Exchange rules be investigated, yet IFSRA has refused to undertake any investigation. IFSRA is attempting to hide behind confidentiality, as a reason for its failure to take action on this blatant abuse by Aer Lingus of Stock Exchange rules. Even Dermot Mannion, Aer Lingus’ CEO, highlighted this fact in his RTE Radio interview on the 12th August 2007 when he claimed that the government was only told on the Friday, 3rd August and when he asserted “the government is a shareholder, we are a publicly quoted company, there are restrictions in terms of our ability to give information to one shareholder that’s not available to others”.

“Ryanair is unaware as to whether IFSRA’s failure to act in this case is because one of the parties involved in these market sensitive briefings was the Irish Government. However Ryanair believes that IFSRA, as an independent regulator, should be prepared to investigate breaches of Stock Exchange rules, even when they involve two Government departments acting as substantial shareholders of an Irish quoted publicly listed company”.