Motorola Inc’s Iridium consortium formed to launch and operate an array of 66 low earth orbit satellites intended to provide global cellular telephony, has raised an extra $315m in a private financing from its existing investor group, bringing its total capital base to $1,900m. The company had originally planned to raise the funds via a public debt offering, but had to pull its planned offering of $300m in junk bonds on September 22 after potential investors decided that the risks were not worth the offered returns. Iridium has also signed to sell the last available Iridium gateway service territory, which covers Australia, New Zealand and the neighbouring archipelagos, to an investor group made up of German, Japanese and UK companies. The buyers include Japanese consortium, Nippon Iridium Corp, Pacific Communications Co Ltd of Taiwan and the Vebacom GmbH joint venture of Veba AG and Cable & Wireless Plc.
