Steve Collar Suddenly Resigns as SES CEO, Leaving Within Weeks
On June 12, 2023, satellite services provider SES announced in a news release that its CEO, Steve Collar, “will be stepping down at the end of June 2023 to pursue other professional and personal endeavours.” The company also announced that Ruy Pinto, SES’ current Chief Technology Officer, “will assume the role of CEO until a permanent successor is announced.”
Given that Steve Collar has spent over 20 years at the company, his decision to relinquish control within 18 days — and without a permanent successor ready to take his place — seems a bit unexpected. Especially given the fact that SES is in the midst of establishing itself as a satellite broadband provider, staking its claim as a competitor of SpaceX’s Starlink.
Collar departs SES after the successful launch of two Boeing-built O3b mPOWER satellites into Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) on December 16, 2022. They achieved liftoff aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:48 PM ET. According to the SES news release, Pinto, his successor, joined SES the company in February 2017 and was appointed Chief Technology Officer in January 2019. Prior to SES, Pinto spent over 25 years at Inmarsat in various lead technical and managerial roles.
According to a Boeing press release about the launch, “O3b mPOWER is SES’s second-generation MEO system designed to transform industries with terabit-level scale, roundtrip latency of less than 150 milliseconds, and unmatched service availability. The O3b mPOWER ecosystem comprises an initial 11 satellites each equipped with more than 5,000 digitally formed beams.”
To clarify the reasons for Steve Collar’s sudden departure and how his departure may change SES’ direction going forward, SpaceRef emailed Suzanne Ong, SES’ Vice President of Communications. She replied, “To answer your question, Steve Collar is stepping down to pursue other professional and personal endeavours. In terms of direction, we will continue to pursue our strategy of launching satellites that will enable us to deliver amazing connectivity experiences everywhere on Earth. (Our business is not in residential broadband services. We deliver connectivity to enterprises who in turn delivers broadband services.)”
Meanwhile, a statement attributed to Collar in the SES news release that announced his departure had this to say: “It has been the greatest honour of my life to lead the incredible people at SES. SES has been the benchmark in the industry for decades and I leave the company as its leader and go back to being a huge supporter, admirer and fan and will be cheering Ruy and the Management Team on from the sidelines. With O3b mPOWER launching, the company performing well and C-band all but delivered, the future is bright, and I wish the Board and everyone at SES every success.”
This upbeat tone was echoed in a statement attributed to Frank Esser, Chairman of the SES Board of Directors, which reads, “We would like to thank Steve for his significant contribution to SES over a period of more than 20 years. As CEO, Steve successfully steered SES, leaving the business in a strong position for the future with a differentiated multi-orbit capability, world-class set of customer solutions, a simplified and market-centric organisation, and a strong balance sheet set to be further strengthened from the execution of C-band clearing.”
