More European airlines could be the crosshairs of private equity buyers following Apollo Global Management‘s swoop for EasyJet — with rival U.K. budget carrier Jet2 emerging as a potential takeover target.

Anna Macdonald, investment strategy director at Hargreaves Lansdown, said airlines had been hit hard in the early stages of the Iran war. But recent share price action suggests investors now anticipate further deals ahead.

Macdonald flagged Jet2 as a potential target for private equity interest, highlighting its “similar dynamics” to EasyJet as a low-cost carrier.

“Jet2, for example, was trading on a price-to-equity ratio of 6-7 times. It’s now gone up about 60% since that low,” Macdonald told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Friday. “We might see private equity start to look at that.”

Jet2’s shares rose 0.5% in afternoon trade Friday.

Macdonald noted that U.K. equity valuations have not kept pace with global peers, making the London market “fertile hunting ground” for investors, including private equity buyers. But she said private buyouts of international flag carriers are a trickier call than the budget airline space, adding that the upside potential is less obvious.

A Jet2 spokesperson told CNBC: “We do not comment on market rumour or speculation”.

Apollo is expected to take EasyJet private in a deal which values the low-cost carrier at around $7.7 billion. On Thursday, private equity rival Castlelake announced it was withdrawing its $7.3 billion bid for the London-listed airline, clearing the path for Apollo.

EasyJet’s London-listed shares were down 0.48% in afternoon trade Friday, having closed the previous session 2.8% higher.

Macdonald said the deal lands as the airline sector grapples with multiple pressure points. “It is a tough industry, it’s fairly low margin, it’s very cyclical… and also highly-regulated,” she noted. “Costs can vary a lot, and also demand can vary a lot.”

She added: “In a privately-held environment, they may start to think differently about financing to make it less capital intensive, and perhaps that can then feed through to giving consumers better prices.”

Former Apollo Global Management CEO Leon Black refused to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements he is party to during testimony about his dealings with the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before a House committee on Friday, the panel’s Republican chairman said.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the chairman, said he had issued two subpoenas to Black, “one for all the NDAs that he is party to, and second for a deposition on July 16.”

“This is a result of refusing to answer specific questions about the … NDAs, and the terms,” Comer told reporters after the hearing by his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “We believe that information is vital to our investigation.”

“I will remind everyone that Mr. Black came in voluntarily, but they are refusing to disclose that, so I have issued the subpoena, and we are handing it to him as we speak,” Comer said.

Comer earlier had told reporters that the committee was “pretty confident” Black had signed non-disclosure agreements with some of the victims.

Black walked out of the interview after having taken a long break when he was given the subpoenas.

In a prepared opening statement to the panel, the billionaire Black praised Epstein’s financial acumen, even as he said he had no knowledge of the late money manager’s serial sexual abuse of underage girls and young women.

“Epstein solved a massive estate problem for me, that none of the experts and lawyers I consulted had been able to solve,” Black told the committee, according to a copy of his statement obtained by CNBC.

“It was a problem that would have destroyed enormous value for my family and in Apollo, the company I had founded,” Black said.

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat who sits on the committee, said, “This is the first time that someone actually walked out in the middle of [an interview], and it’s because we had very important questions about Leon Black’s past with Jeffrey Epstein.”

“This is also the first time I heard someone gush poetically about how smart and how great Jeffrey Epstein was,” Subramanyam said.

Another Democrat on the panel, Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, said, “I think the fact that Leon Black left today is extremely telling.”

“We’ve gone through a number of these interviews, and I believe we’ve had a number of witnesses who have not been credible, who have lied to the committee over and over again, Ansari said.

“But today was even different than that. Leon Black was arrogant, he was smug.”

Black’s lawyer, Susan Estrich, in her own comments to reporters, called the issuance of the subpoenas “a premeditated political decision.”

“I want to be clear, as Mr. Black said …. He never abused a woman, never was with an underage woman, he never engaged in sex traffic, he never paid Epstein for access to women, he was never blackmailed by Epstein,” Estrich said. “Mr. Black had no knowledge of any of Mr. Epstein’s heinous conduct.” 

Black, in his prepared opening statement, said Epstein duped him out of more than…