You’ve probably never thought about who owns the "pipe" in the sky when you're watching a live sports broadcast or using a satellite phone in the middle of the Pacific. For decades, one name sat right at the center of that conversation: Loral Space and Communications. It’s a bit of a wild story. It’s a tale of high-stakes Cold War engineering, messy bankruptcies, and a massive corporate merger that basically wiped the name off the map.
Honestly, it's kinda weird how a company that literally helped put people on the moon (via its predecessor Philco-Ford) ended up being a name most people can't quite place today. Loral wasn't just some scrappy startup. It was a titan. But the satellite industry is brutal. The capital expenditures are eye-watering. One bad launch or a shift in the global economy can tank a balance sheet faster than you can say "geostationary orbit."
The Rise and the Heavy Baggage
Loral’s roots go deep into the defense sector. Founded way back in 1948 by William Lorenz and Leon Alpert—hence the "Lor-Al"—it started out doing radar and sonar stuff for the U.S. Navy. But the real shift happened in 1971 when Bernard Schwartz took over. Schwartz was a legend in the boardroom. He turned a struggling defense contractor into a multibillion-dollar powerhouse.
By the 1990s, Loral was buying up everything. They snatched up Ford Aerospace. They formed Space Systems/Loral (SS/L). They were building some of the most sophisticated communication birds ever launched. If you wanted a high-power satellite to beam television across a continent, you went to Loral.
But then things got messy. In 1996, the company sold its defense electronics business to Lockheed Martin for a cool $9.1 billion. That sounds like a win, right? Well, it left Loral focused almost entirely on the commercial satellite market. And that market was about to get slammed.
The ITAR Scandal and the 1996 Launch Failure
You can't talk about Loral Space and Communications without talking about the 1996 Intelsat 708 disaster. This wasn't just a technical failure; it was a geopolitical nightmare. A Chinese Long March 3B rocket carrying a Loral-built satellite veered off course and crashed into a village.
The fallout was insane. The U.S. government accused Loral (and Hughes) of sharing sensitive technical data with the Chinese during the failure investigation. Basically, the feds argued that by helping the Chinese figure out why their rocket blew up, Loral was inadvertently helping them improve their ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) guidance systems.
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Loral ended up paying a $14 million fine. That was the largest civil fine in the history of the State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls at the time. It hurt their reputation. It tightened export controls (ITAR) so much that it became a massive headache for American satellite manufacturers to compete globally.
Why the Bankruptcy Changed Everything
By 2003, the wheels were coming off. The "telecom bubble" had burst a few years prior, and the demand for new satellite capacity had cratered. Loral Space and Communications filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
It was a total mess. To get out of it, they had to sell off their crown jewel, Space Systems/Loral, to MDA (MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates) years later. SS/L is still a huge deal today—now part of Maxar—but it’s no longer "Loral."
People often forget that after the bankruptcy, Loral became more of a holding company. Their biggest asset? A 62.7% economic interest in Telesat, the Canadian satellite giant. This is where the story gets interesting for investors. For years, Loral was basically a "proxy" for Telesat. If you wanted to bet on Telesat's fleet, you bought Loral stock.
The Telesat Merger: The End of an Era
For about a decade, there was this weird tension between Loral and its partner, the Public Pension Investment Board of Canada (PSP Investments). They co-owned Telesat, but the structure was clunky. Investors were constantly screaming for a "monetization event."
It finally happened. On November 23, 2020, Loral announced it would merge with Telesat to create a new public company, Telesat Corporation.
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The deal was finalized in late 2021.
That was it. The Loral name was officially retired from the NASDAQ. If you look for the ticker "LORL" now, you won't find it. It’s all Telesat (TSAT) now. The merger was designed to give Telesat the "currency" (publicly traded shares) it needed to fund its massive new project: Telesat Lightspeed.
What is Telesat Lightspeed?
Since Loral's DNA is now inside Telesat, this is the future of that legacy. Lightspeed is a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation. Think Starlink, but for the "big boys." Instead of selling to your average consumer, they’re targeting airlines, cruise ships, and governments.
- Altitude: These birds fly much lower than the old geostationary ones.
- Latency: Because they're closer, the lag is way lower.
- Capacity: We're talking terabits of data.
It’s a massive gamble. The project costs billions. But it’s the only way to stay relevant when Elon Musk is launching rockets every other week.
The Nuance: Was Loral a Success or a Failure?
It’s tempting to look at a company that went bankrupt and eventually disappeared and call it a failure. But that’s too simple.
Loral defined the satellite age. Their engineering at the Palo Alto facility (SS/L) set the standard for decades. Most of the TV you’ve watched in your life probably passed through a Loral-built transponder at some point.
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The "failure" was more about the financial structure and the timing. They were too early on things like Globalstar (a mobile satellite phone venture that also went through a brutal bankruptcy). They got caught in the crossfire of U.S.-China relations. They were a victim of the massive capital requirements of space.
Lessons for Today’s Tech Investors
If you're looking at the current "Space 2.0" boom—companies like Rocket Lab, Spire, or even SpaceX—Loral’s history is a cautionary tale.
- Hardware is hard. Building stuff for space has zero margin for error.
- Regulation is a beast. Loral’s ITAR issues proved that a company can be crippled by government policy even if their tech is great.
- Consolidation is inevitable. Eventually, the smaller players get eaten, and the holding companies merge to survive.
Loral Space and Communications might be gone as a legal entity, but its fingerprints are all over the industry. When you see a Maxar satellite image or a Telesat-powered internet connection on an airplane, you're looking at the ghost of Loral.
Moving Forward: What to Track Now
If you want to follow where this legacy goes next, stop looking for "Loral" and start looking at the LEO market dynamics.
Keep an eye on the Telesat Lightspeed rollout. They recently shifted their manufacturing contract from Thales Alenia Space to MDA (ironically, the company that bought Loral's old manufacturing arm). This move was intended to save billions in costs and get the satellites in the air faster.
Monitor the commercial satellite manufacturing sector. The Palo Alto site that was once the heart of Loral is still a hub of activity. The way those engineers are adapting to smaller, cheaper satellites tells you more about the future of business than any stock chart ever could.
Finally, check the FCC and ITU filings for spectrum rights. Loral’s greatest long-term value wasn't just the metal in the sky; it was the "real estate" (the orbital slots and frequency rights) they secured. That’s the invisible gold that Telesat still sits on today.