A report in the Luxembourg Times says that the SES board of directors have looked at how their senior staff are remunerated and that Adel Al-Salah, its CEO, could take €9.5 million in overall compensation. It would make Al-Saleh among Luxembourg’s best-paid managers.

The maximum payout is comprised of a combination of three elements: Al-Saleh’s base salary currently worth €1.2 million, annual cash bonuses worth up to 150 per cent of the base salary, and – if SES exceeds its performance objectives – longer-term shares which could reach over €6.5 million.

The SES board decided last year that its pay-rates were below average, in particular having acquired Intelsat.

In December, the board awarded Al-Saleh more than half a million shares in the company that could be worth €4 million if business-plan targets are hit, the company’s annual report filed in March showed. If the company well exceeds financial and strategic goals by 2028, those shares bulge in value and would mean Al-Saleh’s long-term incentives would amount to more than €6.5 million for 2025, or 555 per cent of his annual base salary of €1.2 million, disclosures reviewed by executive compensation experts Thomas Bolger and Ingolf Dittmann show, and the newspaper reported.

“The CEO’s revamped pay structure, approved at the company’s annual meeting in April, also includes cash bonuses worth up to 150 perc ent of base salary, shareholder disclosures indicated. The pay policy now applies for each year of Al-Saleh’s or a successor’s tenure,” says the newspaper.

“SES has gone from being a mid-cap European satellite operator to absorbing its main US rival, and the board is now essentially saying, ‘We need to pay American-scale compensation to retain leadership of what is now a transatlantic business operating critical security infrastructure,’ said Bolger, a senior stewardship analyst at UK-based Minerva Analytics, which advises institutional investors on executive compensation and other corporate governance questions.

SES shares have performed well over the past six months, rising from around €6 in January to a recent ‘high’ of €8.22 on May 14th (although falling back to €7.86 on May 18th).

“Another point of comparison is publicly traded competitor Eutelsat Communications. The Paris-based satellite rival – smaller than SES in revenue and operating results – paid its outgoing CEO Eva Berneke €2 million over the year before her May 2025 departure, followed by €3.4 million in severance pay, the company said in a report to investors,” stated the newspaper.

SES held an Extraordinary General Meeting on May 15th focussed on cancelling its own shares (35.9 million shares) amongst other topics.

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Categories: Blogs, Business, Inside Satellite

Tags: Adel Al-Saleh, ceo, luxembourg, SES