Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou
Entrepreneur and Philanthropist
Biography as at 19 October 2026
Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou was born in Athens, Greece in 1967 and is a dual citizen of Cyprus and the UK living in Monaco. He is best known for creating the easy family of brands (easy.com) starting with easyJet.com in 1994 when he was just 27 years old. Six years later he floated the airline on the London Stock Exchange in order to fund expansion of the fleet. Today easyJet operates about 360 Airbus aircraft, carrying around 100 million passengers annually. Since the start the airline has flown more than 1.3 billion passengers.
In August 2026 the airline’s board accepted an offer by the private equity giant Apollo to take the company private and Stelios and his family will remain in the private unlisted vehicle as long term shareholders.
Expanding the easy brand
Stelios took the strategic decision to retain ownership of the easyJet.com brand in his own private company called easyGroup.world and expanded the easy brand to many other sectors including easyHotel.com, easyStorage.com easyMoney.com , easyCleaning.biz and many others. A list of the 100 most active easy brands can be found at easy.com.
For more information, view a three minute video explaining the business model of the easy family of brands at easyHistory.info .
Charity work
Stelios uses the steady stream of royalties from the revenues of the easy family of brands to fund his philanthropic work through the charitable foundation he established in 2011 (see stelios.org).
The Stelios foundation supports a well-diversified range of good causes across the six countries where he and his family have lived and worked: the UK and Ireland, Monaco and France and Greece and Cyprus.
To date Stelios and easyGroup have given more than 138 million euro to charity.
Early years, family and recognition
Stelios is the second son of Loucas and Nedi Haji-Ioannou. His late father Loucas, a Greek-Cypriot shipping magnate, supported Stelios financially in his entrepreneurial start-up venture back in 1994, hence his brother Polys and sister Clelia are substantial co-shareholders in easyJet.
Education: Stelios attended the Doukas High School in Athens till 1984, graduated from the London School of Economics in 1987 and the City University Business School in London in 1988.
In 2006 at the age of 39, Stelios received a knighthood from HM Queen Elizabeth II, becoming Sir Stelios in recognition of services to entrepreneurship.
Stelios has lived in Monaco since 1990 and works from his family office easyGroup Holdings Ltd and the local foundation stelios.mc.
In 2023 he received Monaco’s highest honour from the Sovereign Prince Albert II.
Stelios and his wife Orla Murphy live in Monaco and have a daughter named Aria Haji-Ioannou born in 2018.