Airtel partner Eutelsat names new chief; read current CEO Eva Berneke's message here

Eutelsat
has appointed
Orange
executive
Jean-Francois Fallacher
as its new CEO. Fallacher, 58, will be replacing the Franco-British
satellite communication
provider's current chief,
Eva Berneke
. Fallacher, who is a telecoms sector veteran and has led Orange's branches in Romania, Poland, Spain, and France over the past 15 years, is set to take over Eutelsat, which also shares a strategic partnership with Indian telecom giant
Airtel
, on June 1. The change reportedly comes as Eutelsat seeks to reduce Europe's dependency on Elon Musk's
Starlink
. Eutelsat also said that it needs more financing as Europe looks for home-grown satellite communication options for both commercial and defence purposes.
"It is a continuity appointment, not a rupture with the strategy, as the path is clearly traced and the new CEO is committed to build,"
a Eutelsat spokesperson said to the news agency Reuters.
Read what Eutelsat CEO Eva Berneke said about her exit from the company
The company's current CEO, Berneke, also took to the professional networking platform LinkedIn to share a message about her departure from Eutelsat.
Berneke wrote:
'Ensuring Eutelsat Groups future direction
Dear friends, colleagues and partners across the world.
This morning we announced that I will hand over the realms of Eutelsat to a new CEO, who will onboard the company starting 1 June.
Since I took over the CEO position in January 2022, the world has changed in many ways; Russia invaded Ukraine and put geopolitics on the radar for leaders and companies all over the world and the early morning attack on the Viasat satellite - on the day of the Russian invasion - placed SatComs, space and subsequently Eutelsat in the centre of it all.
The world has changed immensely and so has Eutelsat. We announced the merger with OneWeb in the summer of '22 and completed the merger the following year, creating the first LEO-GEO player in the SatCom industry and the only operational LEO constellation operator besides Starlink in the US. New steps were taken in 2024 when Eutelsat joined forces with 2 other operators and won the significant 10,6Bn Euro IRIS2 contract with the EU with the objective of developing a European Souverain space connectivity capacity and ensuring that Europe remain sovereign and independent – also in Space. In parallel with all of this; Eutelsat's GEO Tech teams managed no less than 5 GEO launches. And last but not least, we partially divested our passive ground infrastructure and welcomed EQT as new investor, and jointly we are now on track to create the world's first satellite antenna company.
So looking to the future; Eutelsat is set for a full alignment with a world where Europe is a strong souverain space player and strongly aligned with the telecom connectivity ecosystem. So with Eutelsat's strategy anchored in the IRIS2 and European souverain future, we look to adjust our governance and shareholder structure, and this has paved the way for our CEO succession, which will unfold during the next month. Jean-Francois Fallacher will join as Eutelsat's new CEO on June 1, and I will make sure he gets onboarded with our fantastic teams, our cherished customers, strategic suppliers and regulatory partners.
I hope that you will be as welcoming and friendly to him as you have been to me during the past years and this says a lot! Bringing Eutelsat into a new future has been an immense challenge but first and foremost a great privilege and pleasure and I have truly enjoyed being part of the global space family and steering Eutelsat into a new and very exciting future.
I will see you around, EVA'
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