Siobhan Creaton > Quotes

“He didn't mince his words and his language was fairly flowery. He said if they didn't like it they could fuck off”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

“The Aer Lingus board moved quickly to dismiss Ryanair’s offer, which it said was ‘unsolicited, wholly opportunistic and significantly undervalues the group’s business and attractive long-term growth potential’.”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

“Ryanair had managed to strike a deal on eleven Boeing 737 aircraft that were all ten years old and had to put down $20m from its own coffers as a one-third deposit on the finance lease. The rest was to be paid off over the next five years with bank loans from New York, leaving the airline with fairly modest cash reserves. Ryanair,”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

“seagull meetings’ – according to one executive, because Ryan ‘swoops in, shits on everyone from a height and swoops away again’.”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

“More than a hundred new airlines went into business around this time, although the casualty rate was extremely high: in 1994 alone, fifty-seven new airlines opened for business, of which thirty-seven closed within two years.”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

“When friends asked how he was coping with his spectacular loss, he would say, ‘I sleep like a baby – I wake up every ten minutes screaming!’ He was advised on health grounds to take a holiday, so he went to his home in Ibiza and ran regularly on the beach. ‘Someone asked me later how much I had lost. I said, “$300 million and 20lbs.”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

“He suggests there are only three reasons why Ryanair might fail - 'nuclear war in Europe, a major accident o believing our own bullshit”
― Siobhan Creaton, A Mobile Fortune: The Life and Times of Denis O'Brien

“If you raised a problem, there had better be a problem and you had better have a start, middle and solution to that issue. You didn’t start something and expect him to fix it.”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

“Yet just days later Ryanair announced that it had placed one of the biggest-ever orders for Boeing’s 737 series aircraft. The company said it would purchase one hundred Boeing 737-800 aircraft in the next eight years and had taken options on fifty more planes, claiming that Boeing’s offer was ‘exceptionally competitive’. Ryanair said the ‘catalogue value’ of the deal was $9.1 billion, but refused to disclose the extent of the discount it had negotiated. Airline industry observers, aware of the US aircraft manufacturer’s desperate need to win the contract, speculated that it amounted to between 30 and 50 per cent. Boeing had been forced to sharply reduce its aircraft production and to lay off up to 30,000 workers as it struggled to stave off a financial crisis in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Some people who know O’Leary and Tony Ryan well suggest one of their great similarities is their ability to ‘corner their prey’.”
― Siobhan Creaton, Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe