Eutelsat will land on the London Stock Exchange as it seals the merger with OneWeb
The new French owner of British satellite company OneWeb will begin trading on the British stock exchange today.
Eutelsat, whose shares are listed in Paris, has been targeting a secondary listing in London as part of the deal reached last year. Its main listing and headquarters will remain in France.
OneWeb had been rescued by the Government in 2020, a move championed by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s adviser, Dominic Cummings, after it went bankrupt. The UK will retain a “golden share” following the acquisition of Eutelsat.
Its secondary listing in London is likely to be seen as a boost for the City at a time when several companies, notably Cambridge-based chip designer Arm Holdings, have exited the UK market.
Arm opted for a blockbuster IPO on Wall Street earlier this month, but also left the door open to a secondary listing in London. OneWeb, a rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink network, operates low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, which aim to provide high-speed Internet access where traditional terrestrial infrastructure is difficult to reach.
In orbit: Eutelsat, whose shares are listed in Paris, is targeting a secondary listing in London as part of the deal reached last year.
Applications include broadband on airplanes and parts of the Third World, as well as in the remotest reaches of the UK.
The alliance joins it with Eutelsat’s more conventional geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites, used for decades for tasks such as weather forecasting or television broadcasting.
Shares rose 2 percent in Paris when the completion of the deal was announced yesterday. But they have fallen by about half since the merger was revealed in July last year.
Eutelsat said the new company’s revenue is expected to see double-digit growth in the medium to long term, reaching around £1.7 billion.
