Paris, Jan 30, 2026, 16:16 (CET)
- France’s finance minister said he blocked Eutelsat’s planned sale of ground antennas on national security grounds
- The abandoned deal with EQT was expected to bring in about €550 million in net proceeds
- Eutelsat and EQT both said the transaction will not proceed because closing conditions were not met
France stopped satellite operator Eutelsat from selling its ground antennas to Swedish private equity firm EQT, Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Friday, calling the assets a national security concern. Eutelsat shares fell about 5% in early Paris trading. Reuters
The decision puts a spotlight on how far Paris is willing to go to keep control of satellite infrastructure that touches defence and telecoms, at a moment when European governments are trying to limit reliance on foreign networks for secure communications. The Financial Times also reported the government’s veto of the deal. Ft
It lands awkwardly for Eutelsat, which had flagged the transaction as a way to bring in cash while reshaping its balance sheet. France is Eutelsat’s biggest shareholder, with a 29.6% stake.
“These antennas are used for both civilian and military communications … a strategic asset. So I said no,” Lescure told TF1, adding that Eutelsat was “Starlink’s only European competitor.”
Eutelsat said on Thursday the planned disposal of its passive ground segment infrastructure assets would not go ahead because “conditions precedent” were not satisfied — in plain terms, approvals and other steps needed to close the deal did not line up. A company spokesperson declined to comment on Lescure’s remarks.
In its regulatory announcement, Eutelsat said net proceeds from the deal would have been around €550 million, and the related service agreement would have carried a negative annualised hit of €75 million to €80 million to adjusted EBITDA — a measure companies use as a proxy for operating cash profit. It also raised its end‑year net debt to EBITDA expectation to about 2.7 times, from 2.5 times previously. Businesswire
EQT said the transaction, first announced in August 2024, “will not proceed” because conditions to close were not met. It said it would keep backing SatPort Infrastructure, the platform that was meant to house the ground station business, as a standalone company. Eqtgroup
Lescure tried to separate the veto from the buyer. In a post on Bluesky after his TV remarks, he wrote the decision was tied to French sovereignty and “in no way linked to the quality of the investor.”
Ground antennas connect satellites to terrestrial networks, making them sensitive for governments because the same infrastructure can route civilian traffic and military communications. That dual-use element was central to the minister’s objection.
Eutelsat provides satellite services to the French army after signing a 10‑year contract worth 1 billion euros last year, Lescure said. The minister framed the ground network as part of the country’s sovereign capability, not just commercial hardware.
Eutelsat, formed through its combination with OneWeb in 2023, pitches itself as an integrated geostationary and low-earth orbit operator. The company says it operates 33 GEO satellites and a LEO constellation of more than 600 satellites.
The risk now is financial and political. Eutelsat loses a large inflow of cash it had expected, even as it avoids the future service costs that would have come with the structure of the deal, and investors are left to price the possibility that other transactions could face similar state scrutiny.
In the same interview, Lescure pointed to another case of state oversight: the sale of French defence firm LMB Aerospace to U.S.-based Loar Holdings, saying France would keep a “golden share” — a special stake that can give the state veto rights — and production would remain in the Correze region.
