Space man transmits privatization message

When Eutelsat enters the public domain it will be led by Ethiopian-born Giuliano Berretta, a sci-fi loving space enthusiast who thinks that compromise does not mean losing the deal and that the market will be best served by a competitive satellite industry

Eutelsat, the Paris-based satellite operator, has its own space-age Italian Renaissance man to lead it into public ownership in the new millennium. Giuliano Berretta's career has taken him from technologist to salesman to the top executive charged with converting the intergovernmental satellite organization into a private company on July 2 this year.

At last, the plan to convert the corporation into a limited company has been approved by the European Union, after years of negotiation.

To guide Eutelsat--which owns 18 satellites in orbit with another six being built--through the privatization process, Berretta has a fat budget to buy new spacecraft, and a mission to promote the image of Eutelsat as a company in motion. In the last year, Eutelsat has been converting its customer base to a higher percentage of business network and Internet services from an early heavy reliance on TV users. Besides being one of the few men on the planet able to spend $1 billion in a single shopping spree for satellites, Berretta is turning Eutelsat into a market player, investing for the first time in a startup company that promises to become one of Eutelsat's future customers.

Within Eutelsat, Berretta has a reputation as a hands-on man who is intensely curious about the technical workings behind the satellite operation and a workaholic who usually arrives in the office with an idea that has been percolating in his brain overnight." Berretta came to Eutelsat in 1990, after 26 years as a telecoms engineer.

Berretta takes a statesman's view of the satellite industry. "The enemy is not in this room," he told other leading satellite chief executives a year ago at a large industry event.

"We need to understand each other's problems," he says. "The Iridium catastrophe, and most likely what will happen to Global-star, will be bad for all in this profession... I can fight but I prefer to cooperate."

As proof, Berretta has struck agreements with his strongest competitors, eliminating some of the sharpest conflicts in the business over orbital slot rights. Berretta has forged separate deals with Societe Europeenne des Satellites Astra (SES) and Loral Skynet, drawing his shareholders Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom into the arrangements to increase his bargaining power. With SES, Berretta negotiated a mutually acceptable agreement on joint use of the 28.5 degree slot, despite having an International Telecommunication Union ruling against him.

With Loral, Eutelsat agreed in 1999 to let the U.S. firm park Telstar 12 at 15 degrees west, a slot to which Eutelsat had priority access rights, and in exchange got Loral's support in accessing the U.S. market, four transponders on Loral's Telstar 12 satellite to sell to Eutelsat customers, and full clearance for Eutelsat to use 12.5 degrees west.

Terry Hart, Loral Skynet president, says Berretta has put Eutelsat on a solid path. "His leadership will result in a very competitive satellite operation that will effectively address the needs of the markets it will be serving."

Scott Chase, chief executive of consultancy Strategis Group Inc., of Washington DC, says Berretta is "one of the most powerful men in the satellite industry because of what he controls and the changes he's pushed through."

Born in Ethiopia, Berretta was raised in northern Italy and has spent the last 20 years living in Paris. He has a Dutch wife and three children, on whom he relies for informal guidance on where consumer markets will head next.

Berretta's love of the inner workings of his satellites goes back five decades to his youth. When he was 11, Berretta became a voracious consumer of science fiction, reading the Italian version of books by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.

Despite his ascendancy to one of the highest posts in the satellite business, Berretta keeps his nose to the ground, choosing at times the company of journalists. Chase recalls a lunch appointment with Berretta in Paris when Chase was publisher of his own satellite magazine. That day, Berretta rushed Chase out of the Eutelsat lobby to avoid running into the telecom minister of a small Eastern European nation, who also wanted to lunch with Berretta. The two snuck out for their tete a tete to a small restaurant up the street only to find the minister in question seated across the room with a group of Eutelsat managers.

After going private, Berretta will push Eutelsat toward an initial public offering in 2003. Staff members say he'd like to lead the company through that big milestone. He can be expected to push for more geographic and market expansion for Eutelsat post-privatization to sweeten the prospectus for stock buyers.

Berretta graduated from Padua University in 1964 with an electrical engineering degree and a specialization in atomics. His first job was designing military radio links. Then he worked on TV transmitters in Rome and Milan before seeing an ad in an Italian newspaper recruiting engineers to the Netherlands for Europe's first satellite projects. Berretta arrived in 1971 at the ESA's ESTEC research center, "a place full of thirty year-olds putting together the European Space Agency."

Today, Berretta plays tennis, skis and goes to the Paris Opera, but still manages to keep up with his beloved science fiction authors. In 2000, he dedicated two new satellites, SESAT and W4, to Arthur C. Clarke, novelist and inventor of the concept of geostationary satellites. This year, Eutelsat dedicates the new Atlantic Birds 1 and 2 to Marconi, the Italian who made the first trans-Atlantic radio communications 100 years ago in December 1901.

COPYRIGHT 2001 EMAP Media Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group