As Wizz Air CEO worth £88 million with a high-flying Olympian wife, József Váradi doesn’t seem to mind being characterised as a ‘dictator’.
‘My job is not to be loved, but to be respected,’ Mr Váradi, 59, once told a Hungarian news outlet – and despite facing backlash over unpopular decisions including urging pilots to work longer hours and sacking 1,000 staff during the pandemic, it seems to be working.
At last week’s AGM, more than 99.7 percent of attendees voted in favour of re-electing him as a director – and four in five voted to award him a huge benefits package, including a salary of more than £710,000 and a 300 percent bonus.
He keeps a tight grip on the business, which he founded in the early 2000s, and has shot to wealth from a position of poverty – with his revolutionary father imprisoned for his participation in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
This week has proven once again that Mr Váradi simply doesn’t care what his critics say – as he continues to pursue a £100 million payout, should he turn his firm around and increase its share price to 12,000p by 2028. This morning, it was as low as 1,240p.
As Wizz Air CEO worth £88 million with a high-flying Olympian wife, József Váradi doesn’t seem to mind being characterised as a ‘dictator’
Mr Váradi is married to Hungarian silver medalist, Váradi-Bóta Kinga, and the pair are now turning to wine as their latest business interest
The WizzAir chief today hit out at ‘socialists’ as he vowed to take his bumper bonus despite falling customer ratings and a plummeting share price, which peaked at 2,500p in June.
But despite the company’s woes, Mr Váradi – who rose to the head of the multi-million pound business after being inspired by the difficulties faced by his father amid the Hungarian uprising – has a remarkably nonchalant attitude to the accusations levelled at him.
Born in 1965 to Hungarian parents, Mr Váradi faced a tough start in life as the family struggled in poverty.
His father became involved in the 1956 Hungarian revolution before Mr Váradi’s birth, for which he was briefly jailed and then ostracised from stable work.
With his father only occasionally managing to find employment, Mr Váradi’s mother worked in a factory to help support the family.
CEO József Váradi (pictured) earns £710,000 – but he’s due to receive a ‘one-off’ bonus worth 300 percent of that salary – in the region of £2.1 million
After winning a scholarship to one of the country’s top universities, Mr Váradi moved to Budapest aged 18 and graduated from Corvinus University as an economist in 1989.
He originally spent brief stints at a chemical plant and a paint factory, before joining the multinational Procter & Gamble – an American household goods producer.
Rising rapidly through the ranks during his ten years at the company, he then joined Malév Hungarian Airlines as a manager in 2001.
Just five months later was plunged into the spotlight when the company’s board refused to extend its CEO’s contract – and the board’s chief offered him the job.
Mr Váradi later admitted he was ‘half-drunk’ at the time, having received the call while out drinking with colleagues – but within 24 hours, he had accepted.
Regime changes meant the businessman was eventually forced to leave the firm in 2003 – but ever the entrepreneur, he quickly set up Wizz Air.
At a time when Hungary was about the join the EU, Mr Váradi planned to capitalise on the surge in travel that would come with the sudden freedom of movement for Hungarians to enjoy.
It quickly became the most popular short-haul airline in central and eastern Europe.
Mr Váradi has put his success down to his family, previously describing how his father ‘had a lot more potential than he was able to materialise given those circumstances, and maybe that kind of became a driver in me.
‘I felt that I ought to do something for the blood, to prove that we are worth more than what he ended up with.’
Wizz Air has been beset by problems including falling share prices and being ranked the worst for customer service by Which?
And he’s not satisfied by only running one of the largest airlines in Europe – Mr Váradi is seeking further success with a new wine business he has launched with his wife, Váradi-Bóta Kinga.
Ms Kinga is a celebrated Hungarian Olympian specialising in canoe sprinting, and was a silver medalist at Athens in 2004.
Latest estimates put the Wizz Air CEO’s net worth at around £88 million – but he’s not looking to stop anytime soon.
He has successfully negotiated a huge £100 million payout – but only if he succeeds in boosting the company’s share price to 12,000p by 2028.
His approach to business has been criticised after a series of controversial decisions in recent years.
As the Covid pandemic led to the grounding of almost all aircraft around the world, Mr Váradi took drastic measures and laid off 1,000 crew members – or around 20 percent of its workforce.
Four years later, he has now admitted the cull ‘dented morale’ at Wizz Air after he looked as the pandemic as purely a ‘financial issue’.
And the CEO has also been accused of pushing a culture in which pilots are encouraged to fly extra shifts despite feeling ‘fatigued’.
In an internal video seen by the Daily Mail, the budget airline boss said: ‘We are all fatigued but sometimes it is required to take the extra mile. We cannot run this business when every fifth person of a base reports sickness because the person is fatigued.’
Pilots previously told MailOnline they were offered a low base salary in order to encourage them to take on extra flying hours at generous rates.
But safety organisations raised concerns at the time it could cause pilots to feel pressured to take on extra flights.
Hungarian Katalin Kovacs, Szilvia Szabo Erzsebet Viski and Kinga Bota wave after receiving their silver medals in the Women’s K4 500m final for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games
As well as the impact of Covid on the aerospace industry, the company has faced major issues with its engines, which has impacted on customer capacity.
Aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney began recalling thousands of its geared turbofan engines last year amid concerns over contaminated metal parts.
Five months ago, Mr Váradi warned that engine problems could continue to affect the Hungarian firm for at least two years.
But although the matter has forced Wizz Air to temporarily ground some planes, it has still flown 62.1 million people on a 12-month rolling basis, a 9.6 per cent year-on-year jump.
Yet with the continued war in Ukraine and deepening conflict in the Middle East, Wizz Air could have serious issues replicating those figures if many of their usual routes have to be reconsidered.
Wizz Air was also ranked the worst airline for customer service for the third year in a row by Which? this summer – although this is another finding Mr Váradi takes issue with.
‘We think it’s completely unfair. I mean, we looked into the methodology… the sample size and the representation of the sample,’ he said.
‘We have been making huge investments in the company as well as in the UK in particular. I mean if you just look at the UK, I think the average age of the UK [aircraft] fleet is one year.’
