Vietnam's 'Bikini Airline' Tycoon Slapped With £155-M Suit In UK

A "bikini airline" tycoon who pledged the biggest ever donation to an Oxford college is at the center of a £155 million High Court legal claim, Camilla Turner reported for The Telegraph.

Photo Insert: VietJet, the "bikini airline."

Linacre College announced over a year ago that in exchange for a “landmark gift” from Sovico Group, it would change its name to Thao College, after the company’s chairwoman, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao.

The group is the parent company of VietJet which Thao launched in 2007 as Vietnam’s first privately run low-cost airline. It became known as the “bikini airline” after it ran an ad campaign featuring bikini-clad flight attendants.

In November 2021, Linacre College declared with great fanfare that Thao had pledged via her firm to donate £155 million to the college.

But the first tranche of £50 million is now almost six months overdue and sources say the deal is considered to be “dead in the water.” Linacre College was founded in 1962 and named after the humanist and physician Thomas Linacre, who was born in Canterbury in the mid-15th century.

A decade later, she took the company public and became Southeast Asia’s only female billionaire. Thao is now the general director of VietJet and chairman of Sovico Holdings, the parent company of VietJet Air which invests in a number of real estate and energy projects.

But papers filed at the High Court’s commercial division reveal that VietJet is being sued for the coincidentally same sum of £155 million plus interest which is accruing at a rate of at least £31,000 per day.

The claim form, filed by FW Aviation Holdings 1 Limited, states that VietJet leased four aircraft but fell into arrears after failing to make a series of rental payments in 2021.

VietJet filed its defense earlier this month, in which it admitted that it fell into arrears with rental payments but blamed this on “cash flow problems” owing to the pandemic and Vietnam’s national lockdown, which meant it had to suspend operations. However, it denied that it was in breach of the lease agreement, and denied that it owed “any of the relief claimed.”

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