Eutelsat schedules OneWeb merger vote
August 22, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Eutelsat has set September 28th for an Extraordinary General Meeting of shareholders designed to vote on the proposed merger between itself and OneWeb. The meeting will be held in Paris.
The merger scheme was announced in July 2022. The other regulatory hurdles have been completed satisfactorily. OneWeb’s shareholders have already voted in favour of the plan. Eutelsat already owns 23 per cent of OneWeb.
A positive vote in favour of the merger is likely. The vote would then be followed be the formal merger. Major shareholders, representing 49.4 per cent of Eutelsat’s shareholders have already registered their support.
The only potential problem is from small shareholders who object to the deal and are unhappy with Eutelsat’s suspension of its annual dividend. But numerically these shareholders are unlikely to create any major problem for the merger scheme. Eutelsat’s share price has declined since November 2021 (from a then €11.30 to today’s €5.43).
Once the merger is completed the next hurdle for Eutelsat is gaining acceptance from the European Union for Eutelsat’s participation in the huge IRIS2 low Earth orbit broadband consortium.