SES World Skies was a short lived company formed as a result of the merger between the two SES subsidiaries, ''

SES Americom SES Americom was a major commercial satellite operator of North American geosynchronous satellites based in the United States. The company started as RCA Americom in 1975 before being bought by General Electric in 1986 and then later acquired ...

'' and ''SES New Skies''. The company was merged into its parent company, SES in 2011.

History

SES Americom

SES Americom traces its roots back to RCA Americom, formed in 1975. RCA Americom was notable for launching the Satcom series of satellites which were instrumental in helping early American cable TV channels gain traction. In 1986,

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

acquired RCA and renamed the Americom unit to

GE Americom SES Americom was a major commercial communications satellite, satellite operator of North American geosynchronous satellites based in the United States. The company started as RCA Americom in 1975 before being bought by General Electric in 1986 ...

. Fifteen years later, in 2001, GE sold its GE Americom unit to SES (Société Européenne des Satellites) for US$5 billion in cash and stock.

SES New Skies

In 1998,

Intelsat Intelsat S.A. (formerly Intel-Sat, Intelsat) is a Luxembourgish-American multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons, Virginia, United States. Originally formed ...

transferred 5 of its 24 satellites to New Skies Satellites N.V., a Dutch start up company formed by

to help move

towards privatisation. In June 2004, New Skies Satellites was sold to

The Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. It was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions firm by Peter G. Peterson, Peter Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman, Stephen Schwarzman, who h ...

for US$956 million. Eighteen months later, SES Global (formerly Société Européenne des Satellites, now SES, the operators of Astra) agreed to purchase New Skies from Blackstone for US$1.16 billion. In September 2006, the company name was changed from New Skies Satellites to SES New Skies.

Internal mergers

In September 2009, SES New Skies and

were merged to form SES World Skies. In September 2011, SES World Skies and

SES Astra SES Astra SA was a corporate subsidiary of SES, based in Betzdorf, in eastern Luxembourg, that maintained and operated the Astra series of geostationary communication satellites between 2001 and 2011. Formed in 1985 as Société Européenne ...

were merged into SES to streamline operations under a single management system.

References

External links