Cyrus’s Jonathan Peachey knows how to engage Down Under

Jonathan Peachey was living in New York and running Virgin Atlantic when he decided to propose to his girlfriend in Australia.

Virgin Australia aircraft parked at Brisbane International airport. Picture: AFP

British-born accountant Jonathan Peachey was living in New York and running Virgin Atlantic in 2010 when he decided to propose to his English girlfriend, Bianca.

They were planning a holiday together in Australia. Peachey had saved up for the trip, choosing the upmarket Queensland resort island of Bedarra to pop the question.

“It was a big three-week trip,” Peachey tells The Australian on a Zoom interview at the weekend from a house in the New York area, where he has been living with his wife and seven-year-old daughter during the pandemic.

“It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips. I ended up going from New York to London, where she was living at the time, to Hong Kong and Sydney carrying the engagement ring,” Peachey adds. “I was petrified I was going to lose it every step of the way.”

Instead of bright sunshine, it was raining at Bedarra at the time.

“I popped the question in the middle of the rain,” he says.

It may have been rainy but it could have been worse. A year later the Queensland coast was hit by Cyclone Yasi, one of the worst storms in the state’s history.

Peachey was speaking during his first interview as the point man for the bid by New York hedge fund Cyrus for Virgin Australia.

He has never worked in Australia, but has made several visits to the country and has ties with management at Virgin Australia that date back from his long standing work with Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.

Jonathan Peachey of Cyrus Capital

Peachey studied maths, operational research, statistics and economics at the University of Warwick in England before moving to London start work as an ­accountant with PwC in 1996.

He joined Virgin in London two years later, and has retained ties with Sir Richard ever since.

He worked in Virgin’s finance and corporate development group in London until 2006, by which time Sir Richard had decided to set up an airline in the US and was also planning to launch a fleet of commercial space ships.

He moved to San Francisco to set up Virgin America and Sir Richard’s dream of going into space, Virgin Galactic.

Ten months later, in November 2006, he moved to New York to help set up a portfolio management team for Virgin in the US and continue his involvement with the development of Virgin America and Virgin Galactic.

Under US law at the time, foreigners could only own 25 per cent of an airline, so Sir Richard needed a US investor and partner.

Enter Cyrus Capital, founded by Stephen Freidheim and named after his father, the businessman Cyrus Freidheim, who had been a partner at management consultants Booz Allen Hamilton.

Virgin America took to the air in 2007, initially as a low-cost operator based in San Francisco. The airline continued to grow, with Peachey taking over as managing director in December 2008, just as the global financial crisis hit.

“I worked across the other side of the table, but really with Cyrus and Steve Freidheim,” Peachey says. “We went through all the ups and downs of the cycle of launching an airline and growing it.

“We took a business to a successful IPO (on the Nasdaq in 2014) and then a trade sale over a period of 12 years.”

Virgin and Cyrus did well out of the deal, selling Virgin America to Alaska Airlines in December 2016 for a $US2.6bn.

Peachey ran the airline and was on the board of Virgin America until April 2013, when he left to become CEO of Filip Technologies, an award-winning wearable phone and locator for children ahead of the Apple Watch.

In an interview at the time, Peachey told how his 18-month-old daughter was so tech-savvy she could open his smartphone.

Peachey ran Filip until 2016, joining Cyrus in 2017 as an adviser on investments in airlines. The next venture between Cyrus and Virgin, their joint investment in British regional airline Flybe, through a consortium set up in 2018 called Connect Airways, did not go so well. Never financially strong, Flybe was hit hard by the travel restrictions this year with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, collapsing into administration on March 5.

He is still on the Flybe board, trying to sort out its problems, hoping it can return to the skies.

And now Peachey, who has been quietly keeping in contact with Virgin Australia for the past two years, starting from when it was run by former Qantas executive John Borghetti, is leading a bid by Cyrus for Virgin Australia.

“The firm knows aviation very well,” Peachey says.

“It has invested over $US4bn in various airlines over the years.

“We’ve had some successes and we have had some failures. But we’ve learned from those failures.

“We bring everything to the table here, hoping to play a role in the relaunch and growth of Virgin Australia.”

If he succeeds, perhaps Peachey can bring his wife and daughter back for another holiday on Bedarra Island. Hopefully the weather will be better this time.