May 19, 2026
Michael O'Leary, the outspoken CEO of Ryanair, already owns roughly 4% of the airline (1), a stake worth more than $1 billion. He may soon add another nine-figure windfall to his fortune.
Europe's largest low-cost carrier said Monday (2) that it is close to finalizing a contract extension that would keep the 65-year-old CEO in his seat until 2032. The deal includes a share-option package that could be worth about $300 million if "very ambitious" profit or share-price targets are met.
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Ryanair outlined the plan in its full-year results (3), which showed pre-tax profit jumped 40% to a record €2.26 billion, despite Boeing delivery delays and the war in Iran.
The proposed package would give O'Leary the right to buy more than 10 million shares at a discount if he meets stretch goals the company has not yet disclosed. Ryanair said the strike price, the fixed price an employee pays to exercise stock options regardless of where the shares later trade, would be set at €27.42 on February 27 (4), before the conflict began.
Resuscitating the stock
For a company built on stripping away almost everything nonessential and charging extra for it, O'Leary's proposed pay package is fitting. Almost every part hinges on performance.
Ryanair shares are down over 20% (5) year-to-date, but if they recover to their pre-war levels by 2032, O'Leary's options would be worth around €274 million, or about $318 million.
O'Leary's current contract, signed in December 2022 (6), required Ryanair shares to trade above €21 for 28 consecutive days, or annual after-tax profit to exceed €2.2 billion. He cleared the share-price target last May (7), and the company has now cleared the profit goal as well.
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Ballooning pay packages for high-flying CEOs
O'Leary has long dismissed criticism of his compensation by comparing it with pay in other industries. In a 2024 interview with the Wall Street Journal (8), he put it in more colorful terms.
"The obvious question is, well, is anybody worth $100 million over five years?" O'Leary said. "If premiership footballers are earning f—ing 20 million a year and [French soccer star Kylian] Mbappé is being paid 130 million to go play football for f—ing Real Madrid, then I think my contract is very good value for Ryanair shareholders."
Large equity awards for transportation CEOs have become increasingly common. In November 2025, Tesla shareholders approved a pay package for Elon Musk worth as much as $1 trillion (9) after the Delaware Court of Chancery twice voided his earlier $55.8 billion award (10). Meanwhile, median compensation for the largest U.S. CEOs reached $29.4 million in 2025 (11), according to Equilar.
O'Leary became Ryanair's CFO in 1988 and took the CEO title in 1994, after founder Tony Ryan sent him to Dallas (12) to meet Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher and bring the low-cost playbook back to Europe.
More than three decades later, Ryanair says it expects to carry around 300 million passengers by 2034.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
Ryanair Investor Relations (1),(2),(3),(4); Yahoo Finance (5); RTÉ (6); Bloomberg (7); Wall Street Journal (8); NPR (9); CNBC (10); Equilar (11); Quartr (12)
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Dave Smith is the VP of Content at Wise Publishing and Editor-in-Chief at Moneywise and Money.ca. His work has also been published in Fortune, Business Insider, Newsweek, ABC News, and USA Today.
