SmallSat M&A: From Primes to New Entrants

Alexis Sáinz is the global co-leader of the Hogan Lovells Space and Satellite practice and a member of the Infrastructure, Energy, Resources & Projects group.  She regularly represents export credit and multilateral development agencies, satellite operators, aerospace manufacturers, launch services providers, communications companies, financial institutions, project sponsors, private equity firms, hedge funds, and other industry participants on structured, project and vendor financings, in negotiating commercial and corporate transactions, and with commercially strategic regulatory matters. She also provides industry advice in connection with debt and equity offerings, joint ventures, mergers & acquisitions, and financial restructurings.

Alexis works with investors and lenders to understand the underlying issues impacting space projects and companies, at the intersection of commercial, regulatory and financing aspects of a transaction.  She works with project parties to focus on key deal points and to identify appropriate industry-based risk mitigants and efficient allocation of risk in order to build consensus and drive closure.  She works with companies to build a project and financing strategy from the ground up, anticipating financing issues early in the development of a new project or the growth of a company.

Alexis co-chairs the American Bar Association’s Committee on Space Law.  She co-authored the chapter on “Commercial Satellite Programs” in the Routledge Handbook of Space Law.  Prior to beginning her legal career in 2007, Alexis spent over 10 years working in internet-based industries, including e-commerce and media. She previously served as a consultant for the World Bank, National Geographic, and domestic non-profit organizations in connection with internet-based technology, and she was an early member of KPMG Peat Marwick’s financial service’s e-commerce consulting practice, where she focused on emerging technologies.

Phillip (Phil) is a Managing Director in Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division. He joined Morgan Stanley in 2002 as an Analyst in the firm’s Melbourne, Australia, office. In 2004, he relocated to the New York office where he joined the Global Industrials Group. Phil specializes in the coverage of Aerospace & Defense, Security and General Industrial companies and has worked on a variety of M&A and capital markets transactions for clients across these industries.

Notable space-related transactions include the IPO of MDA, the SPAC merger of Rocket Lab with Vector Acquisition Corp, Harris Corporation’s acquisition of Exelis and its merger-of-equals with L3 Technologies, and debt and equity financings for several commercial and government-customer focused space companies including Virgin Galactic, Maxar and Aerojet Rocketdyne. Phil is a passionate supporter of the space community outside of the work environment, most notably as an executive mentor under the Mathew Isakowitz Fellowship Program and as a member of the ASCEND Guiding Coalition. Phil graduated from The University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) and a Bachelor of Laws (Hons). During and after his years at university, he served as an Infantry Officer in the Australian Army Reserve. Phil currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife Laura and their four daughters.

• Armand Musey President and Founder of Summit Ridge Group. He has over 15 years of equity research, investment banking, and consulting experience. Armand has completed dozens of financial valuation, strategic analysis, business development, corporate governance, and business plan creation assignments in the communications industry and has experience working on numerous financing and M&A transactions. His projects include leading Summit Ridge Group’s support of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust division’s review of the proposed T-Mobile/Sprint merger. Armand’s involvement with a wide breadth of companies has allowed him to develop a deep understanding of a range of media and telecom issues and the complex web of relationships underlying the sector’s competitive dynamics and associated regulatory issues. His legal background allows him to understand the heavily regulated telecom sector. During litigation support assignments, Armand’s legal background also allows him to quickly digest legal documents and identify industry issues likely to be most relevant to the legal team he supports.
• Prior to founding Summit Ridge Group, Armand led the satellite industry research teams for Banc of America Securities, and later Solomon Smith Barney where he also covered the wireless tower industry. He earned numerous honors as a research analyst including being named to the Institutional Investor “All American” team three times (2000-2002) and the Wall Street Journal “All-Star” team. He was ranked as the top satellite industry analyst by Greenwich Associates. He was previously president of a boutique investment bank specializing in the satellite, media, and telecom industries.

Sunil Nagaraj is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ubiquity Ventures, a seed-stage institutional venture capital firm with close to $100 million under management and a focus on “software beyond the screen”® startups. This includes B2B technology companies that utilize smart hardware or machine learning to solve business problems outside the reach of computers and smartphones. By transforming real-world physical problems into the domain of software, Ubiquity startups tap into large greenfield markets and offer more effective solutions.

Sunil currently serves on the boards of Esper, Halter, Kinetic, Parallel Domain, PAXAFE, Safehub, Sensable, ThruWave and other undisclosed investments.

Prior to founding Ubiquity Ventures, Sunil spent six years as a venture capitalist with Bessemer Venture Partners where his work included leading the seed and Series A rounds of Auth0 (acquired by Okta) and Zapier as well as investments in Defense.Net (acquired by F5 Networks), Rainforest QA, Rocket Lab, Spire, Tile, and Twitch (acquired by Amazon). Prior to being an investor, Sunil was founder/CEO of Triangulate, a VC-backed online dating startup using machine learning and behavioral data to improve matching accuracy. He has also worked at Bain & Company, Cisco, and Microsoft.

Sunil holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as President of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (the largest general astronomy education society in the world with past Presidents including Edwin Hubble and Frank Drake). He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Harvard Business School California Research Center and as an Alumni Advisor to the Harvard MS/MBA program. He spends his free time playing piano, sailing, and nerding out on new technologies.

Mr. Schmidt is a Managing Director at KippsDeSanto & Co., recently acquired by Capital One’s commercial bank, and co-heads the Aerospace & Defense Group, where he focuses on sellside and buyside M&A advisory engagements and sourcing growth capital.  Key areas of experience includes space, defense electronics, and armaments.  Prior to joining KippsDeSanto & Co., Mr. Schmidt worked at a competing investment bank where he helped create a leading Aerospace·Defense·Government Services industry banking group.  Notable space-related clients and assignments include multiple General Dynamics space businesses, BEI Precision, Orbital Sciences, GeoEye, and other space-component businesses.

Leading up to his entry into investment banking, Mr. Schmidt served in various combat arms assignments in the US Army across the globe and in various Joint and Army staffs working on classified intelligence assessments, equipment modernization, and weapons testing.  Mr. Schmidt earned a B.S. in (aeronautical) engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point, an M.S. in operations research from the Naval Post Graduate School, and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He is registered with FINRA as a General Securities Registered Representative (Series 7, 63).

Pawel Skonieczka is a Director at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York, focusing on Space Technology Sector coverage.

Deutsche Bank’s Space Technology team provides a broad range of investment banking advisory and capital market services, in public and private markets, to clients globally.

Pawel has over 15 years of experience in finance and investment banking, advising clients on M&A, debt and equity raising transactions.

Pawel graduated from Columbia Business School