BUDGET airline Ryanair has requested that it be delisted from the London Stock Exchange, citing Brexit as the reason for the move.
EU regulations prevent non-EU investors from owning more than 49 per cent of airlines registered within the trading bloc.
The airline said the current UK-based trading volumes did not justify the large trading costs imposed by Brussels.
Non-EU nationals have been barred from buying shares in the company almost two decades, The Financial Times reports, and have now extended this to institutions and individuals in the UK in the wake of Brexit.
On Friday, Ryanair announced its last day of trading in its London-listed shares would be on December 17.
“The volume of trading of the shares on the London Stock Exchange does not justify the costs”, the airline said.
While its primary listing is in Dublin, its American depositary receipts are traded on New York’s Nasdaq.
The company has been trying to reduce its ownership by UK investors since Great Britain departed from the EU in January 2021.
Ryanair flew more passengers this summer than any of its European rivals and reported its first quarterly profit since 2019 – of €225 million – earlier this month.
While the airline’s financial health appears to be improving and business as business is picking up, it has nonetheless sustained losses amounting to hundreds of millions of euros for 2021 as a whole.
