France has blocked satellite operator Eutelsat from selling its ground-based antenna business to private equity firm EQT, citing concerns that the deal would undermine Europe\u2019s ability to compete with Starlink, Bloomberg reported.<\/p>\n
The proposed transaction, valued at about \u20ac550 million (\u00a3550 million), would have seen EQT Infrastructure acquire a majority stake in Eutelsat\u2019s Ground Station Infrastructure Business through a newly created company, SatPort Infrastructure. Under the terms agreed last August, Eutelsat was to retain a 20% stake in the new entity.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s intervention reflects the strategic importance it places on satellite ground infrastructure, which supports both civilian and military communications. The French state is Eutelsat\u2019s largest shareholder, holding a 29.6% stake.<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided to not allow Eutelsat, a big French satellite company, to sell its ground-based antenna that communicate with satellites,\u201d French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on French commercial television channel TF1, according to Bloomberg. \u201cThese antenna are used for civil communication and military communication. Eutelsat is the only European competitor to Starlink, it\u2019s obviously a strategic asset, so I said no.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision underscores growing European concerns about reliance on non-European satellite networks, particularly as Starlink, operated by Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX, rapidly expands its global footprint. European governments have increasingly framed satellite communications as a matter of sovereignty and security, especially amid heightened geopolitical tensions.<\/p>\n
Eutelsat and EQT have not publicly commented on whether the deal could be restructured or revived in another form following the government\u2019s decision, Bloomberg reported.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France has blocked satellite operator Eutelsat from selling its ground-based antenna business to private equity firm EQT, citing concerns that the deal would undermine Europe\u2019s ability to compete with Starlink, Bloomberg reported. The proposed transaction, valued at about \u20ac550 million (\u00a3550 million), would have seen EQT Infrastructure acquire a majority stake in Eutelsat\u2019s Ground Station […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[196,244,1424,242,529,462,5905,6524,451,440],"class_list":["post-20243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-eqt","tag-europe","tag-eutelsat","tag-france","tag-ground-infrastructure","tag-national-security","tag-paris","tag-roland-lescure","tag-satellite-communications","tag-starlink"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}