Crunch day for Intelsat/OneWeb merger
May 15, 2017
By Chris Forrester
Investors and debt-holders in Intelsat have until 5pm today (New York time) to accept, or reject, the proposed investment by Japan’s media conglomerate SoftBank in a financial restructuring of Intelsat.
Intelsat last week extended the deadline for acceptances again. The initial deadline was set at April 20th, and then extended to May 10th, and revised again to today.
SoftBank’s aim was to trim some $3.6 billion from Intelsat’s massive debt burden of some $15 billion and in the process, bring Jersey-based satellite constellation OneWeb into the newly-restructured company.
Intelsat is already an investor in OneWeb, as is SoftBank.
By and measure this three-way merger scheme is complicated, and inherently controversial. To achieve success Intelsat must persuade at least 85 per cent of its debt-holders to accept the new terms.