SES Americom finishes purchase of Verestar

Satellite services company SES Americom Inc. has completed its acquisition of Verestar Inc. for $18.5 million in cash, the company said today.

SES Americom announced the transaction in April. Verestar of Fairfax, Va., which offers satellite and fiber-optic services, had been under court bankruptcy protection since December 2003.

SES Americom will integrate all of Verestar's employees, assets and operations, including four major teleports. The acquisition will bring a ten-fold increase in fiber connectivity for SES Americom's service platforms and satellites.

At the same time, SES Americom has refocused two divisions affected by the acquisition. Americom Government Services will continue to be headquartered in Princeton, N.J. with offices in the Tysons Corner area of Northern Virginia and in Hagerstown, Md. SES Americom Enterprise Solutions, which supplies bandwidth solutions for telecom and satellite networks and managed solutions for corporate networks, will have offices in Fairfax, Va., Princeton, Amersham, England, and Singapore.

AGS is in "the best position in the industry to deliver satellite bandwidth-only services as well as the most complex network solutions that might be required by civilian and defense agencies and the contractors that support them," said David Helfgott, AGS' president and chief executive officer.

Headquartered in Princeton, SES Americom provides global satellite communications services for media, corporations and the federal government. It is a subsidiary of SES Global S.A. of Luxembourg.