SES will maintain its Luxembourg headquarters in Betzdorf despite planned redundancies and the upcoming merger with Intelsat. CEO Adel Al-Saleh, in interviews with local media, stated that roughly 600 employees—out of a total of 2,000—will remain based in Luxembourg. The company expects 68 job losses resulting from the redundancy plan announced last December. “We need talent everywhere to remain competitive. And we cannot forget that Betzdorf is our headquarters and will always be important,” Al-Saleh said.
Al-Saleh confirmed that the planned Intelsat merger will lead to further job reductions, but these will primarily affect management positions rather than engineering and technical roles. However, a restructuring is still necessary. “Our costs are too high in several areas. We need money for our investments. One way to achieve this is to cut costs so that we can invest this money. This has nothing to do with the acquisition of Intelsat or India. As a company, we need to streamline,” he explained.
The acquisition of Intelsat will result in additional job losses, with management roles expected to be more impacted than those in engineering and technical fields. Earlier this week, SES issued a trading update projecting “better than expected” revenues for its full-year 2024 results, a positive development following Moody’s change in outlook for the satellite operator from “stable” to “negative”.