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James Moore: Expect some hard talkat easyJet's meeting Salman Rushdie: Iranian state media renew fatwa on Satanic Verses author with $600,000 bounty
(about 1 month later)
Outlook: Passengers of a nervous disposition might be best avoiding Luton Airport next week. There are likely to a series of explosions in Hanger 89. Forty state-run Iranian media outlets have jointly offered a new $600,000 bounty for the death of British Indian author Salman Rushdie, according to the state-run Fars News Agency.
This happens to be the location of easyJet's annual meeting. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou has his guns trained on the board, thanks to their plans to award the chief executive, Carolyn McCall, and colleagues bonuses which could make them £8m or more. Fars News Agency, which is closely affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was among the largest contributors, donating one billion Rials - nearly $30,000.
Sir Stelios, with 38 per cent of the shares, says they aren't worth it, and wants to vote down the remuneration report. The announcement coincides with the anniversary of the fatwa issued the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, the agency said. 
The City begs to differ. Standard Life, M&G and Sanderson plan to vote in favour, to the evident fury of Sir Stelios. Ayatollah Khomeini, the First Supreme Leader of Iran, issued the fatwa against Rushdie on charges of blasphemy for his novel The Satanic Verses on 15 February, 1989.
There's a feeling here of the City closing ranks: "Can't have that bally Cypriot chappy making a lot of fuss. Let's see him off." The Ayatollah called for the death of the book's author along with anyone "involved in its publication". 
Time for a ruling from Pirc, which advises a large number of pension funds on how they should vote and is more often than not right. It agrees that the remuneration arrangements are a bit rich, offering Ms McCall and chums too much reward for simply staying put. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, was stabbed to death outside his office at Tsukuba University, the Italian translator Ettore Capriolo survived being stabbed at his apartment in Milan, and the novel's Norwegian publisher was shot three times in the back and left for dead outside his home in Oslo.
But this comes with a caveat: Pirc says its recommendation to vote against the remuneration report should not be seen as a (negative) comment on the board. Rushdie was put under police protection by the British government and spent many years in hiding. 
This is not its usual practice but, given the deterioration in easyJet's relations with Sir Stelios, its caution is understandable. While Iran's former President Mohammad Khatami said the threat against the author was "finished" in 1998, the fatwa has never officially been lifted. 
It takes two to make a fight, and easyJet's directors should have done more to try to calm this in-flight turbulence. It doesn't help that the chairman, Sir Michael Rake, appears to have his hands full with some rather challenging commitments. As if being chairman of BT wasn't enough, he is also the senior independent director at Barclays. Any one of those is a handful by itself. Ayatollah Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in 2005 the order still stands. 
That said, Sir Stelios does give the impression that what really makes him cross is that he has had to give up control of his baby. Really, he should bring this bumpy flight to an end by tabling a bid. The new bounty is the largest organised effort to assassinate Rushdie since the fatwa was issued. 
He is right about easyJet's pay, and he'd arguably be right to vote against Sir Michael's re-election. But for the wrong reasons. It is currently unclear whether he has been made aware of the new bounty.
Last year, the Islamic Republic cancelled its appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair after Rushdie was announced as a speaker. They urged other Muslim nations to boycott the fair.