Elisabeth Pataki Appointed New CFO of SES

On Friday 6 June 2025, Luxembourgish communications satellite operator SES announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Elisabeth (Lisa) Pataki as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective Monday 16 June 2025.

As reported by SES, Lisa is a progressive finance executive with over 20 years of experience at various publicly listed multi-national aerospace and defence companies with strong background in company transformation and investment strategies. She will succeed Sandeep Jalan who has been CFO of SES since May 2020.

The SES Board acknowledged Sandeep's contribution to SES and wished him success in future endeavours. Lisa will work closely with Sandeep to ensure a smooth handover before he leaves on 31 July 2025.

"I would like to thank Sandeep for his steadfast leadership over the last five years where he has driven continuous execution improvement and transformation while strengthening the company's balance sheet with a competitive cost of capital and delivering healthy cash returns to shareholders," said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES. "We are pleased to welcome Lisa as our new CFO. Lisa has extensive experience in the aerospace and defence ecosystem and has completed several successful M&A finance integrations. Moreover, her ability to develop financial strategies that prioritise operational focus, efficiency and profitable investments will strengthen SES's Leadership Team, helping SES achieve our mission of being a leading satellite player."

"I would like to thank everyone at SES for their outstanding teamwork," said Sandeep Jalan, outgoing CFO of SES. "I am proud of the strides we have made during the past years, and I will continue to cheer SES's progress in the industry."

Incoming CFO Lisa Pataki said: "I look forward to stepping into this new position and working with everyone at SES to jointly deliver an exciting future for the years to come."

Lisa is joining SES from Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Company, where she is said to have helped expand profitability through streamlining operations and prioritising capital investments for long-term growth. As Group CFO for the Comet Group from 2020 to 2023, she drove EBITDA margin expansion of over five percentage points. In her ten-year progressive career (2005 to 2015) across RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies Corporation), she held multiple finance roles and led the financial integration of Applied Signal Technologies, one of Raytheon's largest acquisitions in 2011.