We are not changing the cost base at Charleroi by 1 cent he said

“We are not changing the cost base at Charleroi by 1 cent,” he said.Ryanair is also changing its policy of buying all its aircraft outright In future a third of the fleet will be leased. But after-tax margins fell by only 3 points to 29 per cent.Passenger numbers rose by 45 per cent to 11.3 million but load factors – the average proportion of seats filled on each flight – fell from 82 per cent to 77 per cent. Mr O’Leary said he expected yields to fall by a further 10-15 per cent this year as Ryanair continued to cut fares but forecast that profits would continue to grow “materially”, with margins remaining in excess of 20 per cent.Mr O’Leary said he remained confident of being vindicated by the European Commission, which is investigating the cut-price charges Ryanair pays at Belgium’s Charleroi airport. Operating costs over the six-month period outstripped revenues for only the second time in Ryanair’s history, as the airline incorporated Buzz and launched 50 new routes. “Please don’t ask me to feel sorry for rich people who have second homes in France. We don’t have an obligation to go on carrying them to their destinations for ever and a day.

If routes don’t work, we won’t hang around.”He was speaking as Ryanair unveiled an 11 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to €187.5m (£127.5m) for the half year to the end of September. Mr O’Leary was unrepentant about the possibility of closing down services used by Britons to reach holiday homes on the Continent. Ryanair, the low-cost Irish airline, threatened yesterday to scrap six of its underperforming routes unless there was a significant improvement in passenger numbers in the next two months.
The routes include at least one destination in France which Ryanair inherited through the takeover of its rival carrier Buzz earlier this year and three services from Stockholm’s Skavska airport, which is owned by the UK airports operator TBI.Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, said the proportion of seats filled on the vulnerable routes was unacceptable at about 70 per cent and blamed some of the problems on the poor performance of the airport operators.Apart from the three Scandanavian services, the other routes at risk are from Stansted to destinations in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. In the 10 years since Mr Webb created Eaglet, the trust’s net asset value has soared 172 per cent compared with a 36 per cent rise by the FTSE All Share index over the same period.Unicorn now manages £320m through eight funds and employs five core fund managers who, on average, have more than 16 years of experience in the City.

The group is more than 70 per cent owned by its executive management team and describes its investment philosophy as contrary. More than 40 per cent of the Unicorn’s assets are invested in the IT services, media and software sectors.. He founded Eaglet Investment Trust, now managed by Unicorn, in 1993 and has had great success backing smaller companies such as Mears, the council support services group. The introduction to AIM, the junior stock market, will also allow the privately owned Unicorn to incentivise its fund managers via share options and give some of its early stage backers the opportunity to cash in on the company’s recent success.Mr Webb, Unicorn’s chief executive, is widely followed by private investors. Unicorn Asset Management, the fund management group led by the small companies maestro Peter Webb, is planning to float on AIM early next year. This is our fifth strategic add-on acquisition through Premier and continues our initiative of building a branded, category-focused food company.”The Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst portfolio, which has about $50bn in assets, included Yell, the directories publisher that floated in September at £1.2bn..

Unilever said yesterday there would be no redundancies as part of the deal.Lyndon Lea, a partner at Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, said: “The acquisition represents a continuation of our buy and build strength in the food sector. Our focus is very much on larger, global brands and we want to give more support to them.”The strategy to slim down Unilever’s Path to Growth, however, is proving slow at delivering results and the company has warned that even its global products have suffered in the past year. Last month it revised down its sales forecasts for the year for the second time.Ambrosia employs about 200 people in Lifton, Devon. It is now the leading milk-based dessert brand in the UK and 75 per cent of all households buy Ambrosia products. It became part of the Unilever stable when the company bought Best Foods in 2000.But Unilever is trying to slim down its portfolio by about 110 brands to help fund growth and signalled that it wanted to dispose of Ambrosia in July this year.A spokesman for Unilever said yesterday: “Ambrosia could be considered one of our local jewels as it is a very popular brand, but it is very much a UK business and we felt its interests were best served with a UK food company.