This means the prospect of Mr Váradi receiving his £100m bonus promised for the first time in 2021 is fading. Under the terms of the deal, the Wizz boss must increase the company’s share price to £120 by 2028 to unlock the award.
Mr. Váradi, 58, will put those concerns behind him on Tuesday when the airline celebrates its two-year anniversary with a party in Budapest attended by 3,000 employees who flew in from its 35 bases in Europe and the Middle East.
The message he wants to convey is that fleet disruptions have already reached a low point and the number of aircraft grounded due to the engine crisis has peaked.
“This will be one of the biggest events of our corporate life,” he said of the gathering. “We should be very proud of what we have achieved and that should give us energy and pride for the future. We have another 20 exciting years ahead of us.”
Then it goes back to London, where the results for the full year will be presented on Thursday, followed by the meeting on the London Stock Exchange on Friday.
It will be his first time ringing the market’s opening bell. When Wizz went public in 2015, the privilege fell to Bill Franke, the airline’s chief executive and founder of its biggest investor, US private equity firm Indigo.
Afterwards, Mr Váradi will retire to the Mayfair apartment he has called home since late 2020, driven by Wizz’s corporate structure, the desire to be closer to financial markets, the growth of its UK business (Luton is now the largest single location ) and easy global travel from Heathrow.
There is little time to relax. Mr Váradi is just months away from completing his dissertation at King’s College London, part of the master’s degree in war studies he began two years ago.
The topic: Palestinian statehood. He said he decided to do so long before the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent military operation in the Gaza Strip. He declined to reveal the conclusions of his dissertation on the prospects for a lasting peace.
The degree will be his fifth, following a BA in Business Administration and an MA in Economics, which he obtained as a young man in Hungary, an MA in Law from University College London and another in International Direction and Governance awarded by the French Business School INSEAD.
“It’s purely intellectual,” he said. “You know, there was a game called Brick Breaker that I started playing and at some point I realized I was in the top 100 in the world. I thought, my God, if you have time for this, you also have time to do something else.”
The War Studies course in particular not only inspires a thirst for knowledge, but also his time as a military serviceman in Hungary before the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.
He said: “I have always been interested in global affairs. I served in the military. I was a sniper. 10 years ago I started shooting again and now I do it for competition, with pistols, not with sophisticated weapons, I have no eyes for that. But I am interested in the military.”
Mr Váradi is full of praise for King’s – “it is a world leader in war studies” – and for the British education system in general, and reveals that his son will follow in his footsteps and study for an MA in London this autumn after graduating in the US will begin.
“It’s outstanding, the best in the world, and I can make some comparisons. Their leading schools are truly first class. European academic attitudes are very restrictive. In the UK they say: There is a problem here, look at ways to solve it.”
This is an approach that the government and the City of London would do well to consider as the LSE fights to retain its largest companies and therefore its global position.
Mr Váradi said: “The conditions for the funds must be properly worked out. The pendulum has swung too far and now has to swing back to restore balance.”