The satellite communications industry took a hit this week when the Executive Chairman of ICO Global Communications, Olof Lundberg, resigned Tuesday night.
Lundberg was the company's founding CEO, and served as Executive Chairman since November 1998.
The departure of Lundberg will be a significant loss for the company. Lundberg is credited as being ICO's driving force, and was the company's first CEO. But Lundberg might continue to play a role with ICO, perhaps as a consultant, company officials suggested.
"I think it's still to be decided what, if any, role he'll have within ICO," said spokesman Robert Taylor.
Lundberg, who is 55 years old, had been trying to ease himself out of the company's day to day operations for months, according to another spokesman, Michael Johnson. Lundberg stepped down as CEO of the company in May.
Replacing Lundberg will be Klaus Hummel, deputy chairman of the company's board of directors. Hummel is an executive for DeTeMobil, the mobile telecommunications subsidiary of German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom, which owns a 5 percent stake in ICO.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the company said on Wednesday that there has been "a lot of activity" recently between the company and its investors. As a result, the company may soon be able to announce that is has secured enough money to launch its service, Johnson said.
ICO, which declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on August 27, has for months been trying to raise over $1 billion to help finance a constellation of satellites for a worldwide mobile communications network.
It has also been searching for ways to reduce its projected costs by as much as $600 million.
The company blames its fundraising failures in part on the financial problems of Iridium LLC, another global satellite communications company, which declared bankruptcy in August.
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