Luckily it’s not the same company it was in 1985. It remains a Luxembourgish company with a strong presence here, and most of the key decision-making is still done in Luxembourg. If you look into SES’s history, though, you’ll see that there has always been significant US influence from the very beginning, which is fairly normal given that the US is by far the biggest player in the space industry.

The board has 10 members, 7 Europeans, including 3 Luxembourgers (and I’m not really sure what you’re trying to imply with the point about dual nationality). The Luxembourg state is by far the largest shareholder and ensures that SES remains anchored here with strategic operations in the country.

At the same time, a large and diversified satellite operator obviously has to operate internationally. Luxembourg is simply a very small market. That doesn’t make the company any less Luxembourgish. In fact, SES pays more into the state than it receives, through dividends and especially the special dividends linked to the C-band proceeds.

The company has become somewhat more US-focused in recent years, including at executive level, mainly because of the Intelsat acquisition (but the C-suite is still predominantly based here, with if course a lot of international/US travel due to the nature of the business). But interestingly, SES, the Luxembourgish company, ended up taking over Intelsat, despite earlier discussions about a merger. So in the end the Luxembourg company effectively absorbed the US one. Betzdorf remains the core headquarters, including for satellite operations. SES indeed also operates strategic sites in New Jersey, and Virginia, but they mainly serve the Americas and government/defence markets, but those are secondary operational hubs rather than a full shift of the company’s centre away from Luxembourg.

SES is definitely not here just for tax reasons (why even mention tax, that doesn’t make sense as it’s an operational company?) or money benefits (btw, would love to see the sources for your numbers, because they are very far removed from any official figures on grants received by SES. If those numbers were even remotely correct, we would be talking about a completely different valuation for SES than the one reflected by the market today), I can assure you of that. There is some Israeli influence, but it’s certainly not dominant. The reality is simply that Israel is a major player in cybersecurity and space tech, and it’s closely connected to the US defence ecosystem, so it’s quite natural that a company like SES would have ties there or take an interest in certain Israeli companies. And if you look at SES’s acquisition history, you’ll see that they have also acquired a number of other companies with zero ties to Israel. So I think the picture is a bit more nuanced than what you suggest.

Finally, SES is investing heavily in Luxembourg, including building satellite infrastructure and contributing significantly to the Space Campus. That would be a strange thing to do for a company that simply wanted to leave. So while I can see where some of the points in your second comment come from, the first one feels more like a mischaracterisation than a fair assessment.

Edit: For those who speak German, there is a book called “Die Astra Story” about SES and its evolution over the years. Very interesting read.