Satellite operator SES has raised two €500 million bonds. SES, as is usual in these cases, says it shall apply the net proceeds of the Notes towards its general corporate purposes, including, without limitation (i) financing all or part of the purchase price of the acquisition of Intelsat Holdings (including the payment of fees, costs […]

The European Union has “unconditionally” approved the SES purchase of Intelsat (for €3.1 billion plus debt) and joins the UK’s decision to permit the acquisition to go through. Approvals from the US, including permissions to reassign Intelsat’s frequency licences to SES, are still outstanding. “The Commission concluded that the transaction would not raise competition concerns […]

SES has announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Elisabeth Pataki as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective June 16th. Pataki is a finance executive with over 20 years of experience at various publicly listed multi-national aerospace and defence companies with strong background in company transformation and investment strategies. She will succeed Sandeep Jalan who […]

SES looks set to gain unconditional European Union (EU) antitrust approval for its $3.1 billion (€2.7bn) deal to acquire rival Intelsat. The merger will receive the EU’s approval, reports Reuters, and the European Commission is scheduled to publish its own ruling by June 10th. The deal announced, first announced in April 2024, was recently given […]

SES has announced that the latest pair of O3b mPOWER satellites launched in December 2024 are now ready to offer services across the globe. Featuring redesigned payload power modules, the seventh and eighth O3b mPOWER satellites are bolstering the capabilities of SES’s second-generation medium earth orbit (MEO) system, supporting the delivery of high throughput and […]

O3b mPOWER, SES’s second-generation medium earth orbit (MEO) system, has been awarded the Platinum badge by the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR) Association. This is the highest possible SSR rating tier, and has been awarded to the O3b mPOWER constellation of 13 high-throughput and low-latency satellites, eight of which are already in orbit. The O3b mPOWER […]

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has cleared the take-over of Intelsat by SES in its $3.1 billion move. However, while the UK’s anti-trust clearance is a major step forward for the deal, there are two other entities which also need to give their permissions in the form of the EU and US. The […]

Tom Mueller, founder and CEO of Impulse Space has won a major ‘multi-launch’ order from satellite operator SES.  Mueller was the first employee at SpaceX and his work on the Merlin rocket engine, still used by SpaceX, was hugely important to SpaceX. He founded Impulse in 2020 having retired from SpaceX. The SES order will […]

A report on the satellite industry from investment bank BNP-Paribas highlights that a new auction of satellite C-band spectrum (in particular for US 5G use) “is back and too big to ignore”. The report continues: “As is the €800 billion ReArm Europe plan, with its focus on satellite communications. Geopolitical tailwinds are supportive. But amid […]

European Union (EU) regulators are examining the extent of Elon Musk’s influence and communications of his Starlink broadband-by-satellite system and whether it is a valid competitor to what could be a combined business of SES and Intelsat. SES is attempting to acquire Intelsat in a €3.1 billion deal. The EU’s anti-trust regulators have to decide […]