It is not obvious why Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou seems so cheerful. There seems to be every reason why the easyGroup founder and former billionaire should be as miserable as most of his fellow delegates at this year's World Economic Forum. In the past 18 months, hundreds of millions of pounds have been wiped from the value of his sprawling, orange-clad conglomerate, which spans everything from cruise chips to cinemas, pizzas to mobile phones. The airline industry, in which easyGroup holds its largest single investment — a 27 per cent stake in easyJet — is in the midst of its worst crisis in a generation. In the past two years, the group's market worth has crashed by nearly 60 per cent, to £1.2 billion.

And, to make matters worse, he hates skiing. “Being born and raised in Athens, I prefer warmer climates and activities,” he said, sipping espresso 1,200 metres above sea level in a snowbound Alpine resort. “These are the only three days in the year I can stand being in the mountains.”

Yet the 41-year-old entrepreneur seems remarkably upbeat. “I've been coming to Davos for ten years, I find it useful and this is not the first time we have had a crisis. We had the dot-com bubble. We had September 11. This is just the end of an era of excess.” Put like that, the recession, the credit crunch and the various other faces of the economic hydra that the great and the good have been grappling with in Switzerland seem somehow less frightening. Perhaps his mood reflects the fact that the basic ethos of his brand — cheap and cheerful is well-suited to such chastened times. “I was lucky to be positioned at the lower end of the market,” he admitted. “I also avoided using a lot of financial leverage, so I suppose I am in better shape than some.”

If the downturn was merely a dip, to be quickly followed by yet more of the boom times that easyJet has ridden so successfully, then that might not matter so much, but ... “I don't think this recession is going to be short-lived. In the real world, where my customers live, unemployment levels are only now just beginning to go up.

“Say what you like about Woolworths, that it was a crap shop or whatever, but every month they were paying 32,000 people their wages and 800 landlords were getting rent. The collapse of companies like that is going to have a big impact on consumer spending.”

That, in turn, must have an effect on a business such as easyJet. Stelios — he prefers to be known by his first name alone — said that he welcomed the group's latest results, which forecast that first-half revenues would be stronger than expected largely thanks to a surge in business travellers, but he remains bearish on the prospects for the year ahead.

“It's always dangerous to drive a car by looking at the rear-view mirror,” he said. “We are looking at the quarter ended December and that is history now. Revenue went well, but it is a different environment now. The falling oil price has helped, but now we are being hurt by the weak pound because so many of our costs are in dollars.”

This explains why the airline's former chairman — he floated it in 2000 and remains on the board — has been lobbying so hard for easyJet's management to keep a lid on their plans to buy more aircraft, a dispute that has led to some sharp disagreements with the company's management. “This is not the time for expansion,” he insisted. With 170 aircraft and 45million passengers last year, it would be a case of making one of Europe's biggest airlines bigger still.

The dispute has prompted some to suggest that Stelios would like to take the airline back into private ownership. “Of course not. I am very happy having easyJet in the stock market,” he said. Which would not appear to leave much room for debate on the subject.

Davos has been noticeably different this year. The mood has been muted, the gloomiest that many regular delegates can remember, and the bankers, so numerous in previous editions, are thinner on the ground (“it is one thing to be seen here spending someone else's money, but it's quite another to be seen spending taxpayers' money”). Like many, Stelios blames the former on the latter.

“My instinct tells me that we placed too many people in a position where they were encouraged to take one-way bets: ‘If it works, I make money; if it does not, then it is someone else's problem.' Banking should become boring again and the Government should regulate it much more closely.”

Of course, one man's problems can be another's opportunity and there may be rich pickings among the economic rubble, especially for a cash buyer — “The expression ‘cash is king' has never been more true”. But now may not be the time to expect Stelios to dip into his cash pile and go shopping, even if it is a substantial cash pile. His stake in easyJet would have been worth more than £700 million two years ago, for example: it is still worth about £324million, downturn or no downturn. “You can never get the exact bottom. If we have not yet seen the worst, then I can't believe 2010 is going to be that great, either. It is also the wrong time to start a new business — although I do have a few ideas.” Anything in particular? “I might be tempted to start a cheap supermarket, like Lidl or Aldi. And if there was a listed insolvency practionor, maybe I'd invest in that.” Certain German supermarket chains — you have been warned.

With that, Stelios smiled and headed back into the throng.

CV

Born

February 14, 1967, in Athens

Education

Doukas High School, Athens;

BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics in 1987; MSc in shipping, trade and finance from Cass Business School, London

Career

After graduating from university, he started working in Troodos Shipping Co, his father's shipping company. At 25 he negotiated a $30 million payout from his father and set up Stelmar, his own shipping firm, which he sold to the OSG Shipping Group in 2005 for $1.3 billion. Launched easyJet in 1995 when he was 28 — the airline now runs 400 routes between 103 airports in 26 countries. Other businesses include easyCar, easyHotel, easyBus, easyOffice, easyPizza and easyCruise

Worst setback

Faced manslaughter charges along with his father in 1991 when an explosion on board one of their company's oil tankers killed six people and leaked 50,000 tonnes of crude oil into the Mediterranean. An Italian court acquitted them of charges of poor maintenance, manslaughter, extortion and intimidating and bribing witnesses. The case has dragged on, with appeals and compensation demands rejected by Italian courts

Interests

Funds scholarships for ten undergraduates at the London School of Economics, and ten postgraduates at City University, London

Ambition

Any untapped entrepreneurial possibilities

Family

No spouse, no children