By Gianluca Lo Nostro<\/p>\n
May 7 (Reuters) – German satellite maker OHB will consider legal action if EU antitrust regulators approve a planned merger \u200cof the satellite businesses of Airbus, Thales and Leonardo, its CEO \u200csaid on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The three aerospace and defence groups announced plans in October to combine their satellite \u200bmanufacturing activities into a standalone company, code-named “Project Bromo”.<\/p>\n
The companies say the venture would create a stronger European player, able to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Chinese rivals.<\/p>\n
But OHB, one of Europe’s few independent satellite makers, fears the deal could weaken competition \u200cin Europe.<\/p>\n
“We are raising \u2060concerns because it impacts our supply chain,” OHB chief Marco Fuchs told Reuters, describing the merger as “rather a disturbance of the \u2060market”.<\/p>\n
Asked whether OHB would consider a legal challenge if the European Commission cleared the deal, Fuchs said: “Yes.”<\/p>\n
The core issue for regulators is likely to be whether the \u200bnew company \u200bwould mainly use its scale to \u200bcompete globally, as its backers argue, \u200cor whether it would reinforce their position in Europe.<\/p>\n
Fuchs dismissed comparisons with Chinese competitors, saying Europe does not buy satellites from China.<\/p>\n
OHB’s market value has risen roughly fivefold over the past year, to about 5 billion euros. On Thursday, it reported an 18% rise in quarterly revenue, with order backlog up \u200c45%.<\/p>\n
The company is considering financing options, Fuchs said, \u200bafter abandoning a previous plan to take OHB \u200bprivate alongside minority investor KKR, \u200bas geopolitical changes have altered investor views of space companies.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg \u200cNews reported in March that the \u200bFuchs family, which owns \u200baround 65% of OHB, and KKR, which owns roughly 29%, were discussing a sale of shares equivalent to 20% of the company. Fuchs \u200bdeclined to comment on \u200cthe report.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to sell anything in a secondary (share sale),” Fuchs \u200bsaid, without disclosing how much OHB aimed to raise.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bGianluca Lo Nostro; Editing by Matt Scuffham)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gianluca Lo Nostro May 7 (Reuters) – German satellite maker OHB will consider legal action if EU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[90,18,7959,7958,4377,7890,7960,7957,5551],"class_list":{"0":"post-9567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-airbus","8":"tag-airbus","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-german-satellite","11":"tag-legal-action","12":"tag-leonardo","13":"tag-marco-fuchs","14":"tag-planned-merger","15":"tag-satellite-businesses","16":"tag-thales"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}