Elena Pisonero: "Now is the time for the emancipation of Hispasat"

Today in her Desayunos ESADE talk, Hispasat President Elena Pisonero declared that 2014 would be her company’s chance to "take a leap and grow". She added: "We should have emancipated ourselves when we turned 18, but instead we will do it this year, when we turn 25."

Hispasat is the world’s eighth-largest satellite operator and the fourth-largest in Latin America. The company was founded in 1989 with both public and private shareholders, but over the past two years it has undergone a privatisation process that Ms. Pisonero described as follows: "We are a publicly controlled company with mostly private capital, going through a new maturation phase with the aim of international expansion."

A majority of Hispasat’s shares are privately held: 57% belong to Abertis, 33% to Eutelsat, and 9% to the Spanish public entities CDTI and SEPI. In 2014, Ms. Pisonero hopes to see her company leap to the global level under the regulations for publicly controlled operators whose capital is mostly private. "Thanks to the process that we are beginning in 2014, Hispasat now has a new public-private model that incorporates private management and a public strategic focus," she declared.

Ms. Pisonero described this new approach to public-private collaboration as a challenge for private companies – in this case, Abertis. "The new model incorporates private commitment and industry leadership," she said. Under its new expansion plan, Hispasat expects to triple its investments over the next four years.

"Now is the time for our emancipation," declared Ms. Pisonero. Using visual aids, she explained why Hispasat might have been tempted to maintain a "tiny local operation", but insisted that the new Hispasat would become “an ambitious operator at the global level".

The session featured the participation of Pedro Navarro, Executive Vice President of the ESADE Foundation Board of Trustees, and Maite Barrera, founding partner of BlueCap.