The European Commission has approved the privatization of Eutelsat. Eutelsat is the European organization that allows multiple access by satellite services providers to capacity in any of its 48 member countries. At present it is an intergovernmental treaty organization, but is to become a shareholder-owned company incorporated in France. As part of the restructuring proposal, the company will make an IPO of 30% of the shares within two years of the privatization (July 2003). At present each Eutelsat member country has a signatory - normally the incumbent national telecom provider - which owns a share in the organization proportional to its usage of the Eutelsat system. The Commission said the IPO would dilute these shareholdings "and reduce the possible conflict of interest between [the signatories'] role as shareholders and as distributors of Eutelsat's services respectively." The new structure "will also unambiguously permit the direct distribution of services by Eutelsat rather than requiring customers to approach Eutelsat's current distributors," it said.
