Financial Times' article on Sir Stelios inaccurate, rules PCC

This article was migrated from an old version of our website in 2025. As a result, it might have some low-quality images or non-functioning links - if there's any issues you'd like to see fixed, get in touch with us at info@journalism.co.uk.

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that an article by the Financial Times on EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou was inaccurate, but that its reference to him as "Greek" was not discriminatory. In its ruling published today the PCC added that an apology from the paper for the breach of the Code of Practice on accuracy was a sufficient remedy. Sir Stelios' complaint centred on comments in the Lombard column of the FT, published in May 2011, in response to his public criticism of EasyJet and its failure to pay a dividend. The Financial Times accepted that there had been a "regrettable error" in regard to the date Sir Stelios resigned as chairman of EasyJet, which the paper wrongly stated was in 2009, instead of 2002. He also stated EasyJet had not made a dividend payment since its IPO in 2000. The newspaper accepted therefore a reference to payments being "resumed" required clarification. The FT removed the relevant two sentences from its online version of the article, and offered to publish a correction and apology. "In the context of an account of the complainant's position in regard to payment of the company's dividends this was clearly misleading and raised a breach of Clause 1 of the Editors' Code of Practice. The reference to 'resumed' payments may also have misled readers," the PCC said in a statement. "It was incumbent on the newspaper to correct the record and apologise, which it had sought to do. This represented a sufficient form of remedial action under the code." However Sir Stelios' additional complaint,

that reference to him as "Greek" in the article

breached of Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Code,

was not upheld. He had claimed that to refer to him as "Greek" was inaccurate: he did not hold Greek citizenship but had dual nationality of the UK and Cyprus. Sir Stelios argued that the article referred to his race prejudicially and it was irrelevant to the subject matter at hand. In his view, the article had attempted to portray him as an "untrustworthy foreigner" in the context of the Greek financial crisis. The PCC decided that the references to Sir Stelios in the piece - the headline had referred to a "Greek chorus" and the article had stated that he was a "Greek entrepreneur" - did not raise a breach of either Clause 1 or Clause 12. The newspaper had not made reference to the financial crisis in Greece

at any point in the article,

and the word Greek was "not pejorative per se", the commission stated. "In terms of relevance, the complainant had been happy for previous references to his background to be public knowledge; the fact that he had been born in Greece was effectively part of his public persona. Such brief references to a public figure's background, in a descriptive article about him, were not irrelevant."