Paris will monitor the Eutelsat-OneWeb agreement to preserve French interests – source Bercy | Photo credits: ESA-CNES-Arianespace
(updated with citations §2-4)
PARIS, July 26 (Reuters) – The French government intends to monitor the agreement on the proposed merger between Eutelsat and its British competitor OneWeb to ensure that French interests are preserved, we learned on Tuesday from a source at the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
This operation, which penalized the title on the stock market on Tuesday, falls within the scope of the text allowing Bercy to control certain foreign investments in France, “because there will be foreign shareholders who will enter the capital of Eutelsat” , we explained.
“So, the State will ensure, within the framework of this process, that French interests are well preserved, with this tool.”
“The English rights will not evolve, they will remain in OneWeb. There is no special English right on Eutelsat, they are only on the OneWeb subsidiary, this is a very important point”, we were told. added from the same source.
(Report Leigh Thomas, French version Myriam Rivet, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)