Apollo agreed to buy easyJet at 715p a share. The board said yes. The founder said yes. The market still won't pay it.

On 6 August 2026, Apollo Global Management won a ten-week bidding war for easyJet, valuing the airline at roughly £5.7 billion. Castlelake withdrew. The board recommended the offer unanimously. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou backed it and elected to roll his family's entire 15.3% stake into the new owner rather than take cash.

And yet the shares still trade at a wide discount to the offer.

That gap prices roughly a one-in-four chance the deal never completes — on a recommended, all-cash, founder-backed scheme that would normally close more than nine times out of ten. We went looking for the reason and found it in Brussels, not London.

This episode covers the deal terms, the fight with Castlelake, why the Iran war made easyJet cheap enough to buy, the ownership structure Apollo built to satisfy EU control rules, the European Commission review that knocked 12% off the stock in a single session, and what the merger arbitrage spread is really telling investors.

We also cover the part almost nobody mentions: at current levels you risk roughly three units to win one.

Full written investigation, with charts and data: https://veritaseuropaea.eu/apollo-easyjet-takeover-merger-arbitrage-spread/

Veritas Europaea carries no advertising and takes no sponsorship. Readers and listeners fund everything we publish. Free newsletter and membership at https://veritaseuropaea.eu

Sources: Apollo Rule 2.7 announcement (6 August 2026); easyJet plc FY25 results and Q3 FY26 trading update; Reuters, 22 July 2026.

We publish analysis, not investment recommendations. Merger arbitrage can lose money suddenly and substantially. Verify live prices and consult a regulated adviser before acting. Neither the author nor Veritas Europaea holds a position in easyJet, Apollo or Castlelake. Prices calculated as at the close of 7 August 2026

Twenty years after Roberto Calvi was found hanging under a London bridge, forensic experts looked at his hands — and found no trace of the bricks he was supposed to have carried.

In the final part of our special investigation into Banco Ambrosiano, we follow "God's Banker" through his last nine days: the desperate letter to Pope John Paul II, the missing $1.4 billion, and his flight across Europe under a false name and into the hands of the underworld. We lay out the forensic case that turned a suicide ruling into a murder finding. We sit through the 2005–2007 Rome trial that ended with a killing confirmed and every defendant acquitted. And we watch the Vatican's endgame — a settlement it swore was not an admission, and an archbishop shielded by sovereignty who never stood trial.

The Veritas Brief is the podcast from Veritas Europaea — reader-funded, with no outside advertising. Read the full written investigation at veritaseuropaea.eu

New here? Start the series under Blackfriars Bridge with Part One.

On a single day, the Vatican Bank signed two letters. One told international lenders the money was good. The other, handed over in private, said the exact opposite.

In Part Three of our special investigation into Banco Ambrosiano, we open up the machine. We walk down through the offshore structure that made the fraud possible — a Luxembourg holding company, banks in Switzerland, the Bahamas and Peru, and ten empty shell companies in Panama and Nicaragua that let a bank secretly buy its own stock. We watch two honest Italian regulators destroyed for inspecting it too closely. And we count down Roberto Calvi's final year: the conviction he survived, the reformer who lasted 61 days, and the moment three decades of construction had just three months left to live.

The Veritas Brief is the podcast from Veritas Europaea — reader-funded, with no outside advertising. Read the full written investigation, including a diagram of the money machine, at veritaseuropaea.eu

Missed the earlier parts? Start under Blackfriars Bridge with Part One.

Next time, the final part: the letter to the Pope, the flight from Italy, and the nine days that ended under a London bridge.