Telesat Holding Inc. and its shareholder BCE Inc. announced that a preliminary prospectus and registration statement have been filed for an initial public offering (IPO) of non-voting shares of Telesat Holding Inc., in Canada and the United States.

The Sept. 18 move came one week after Daniel Goldberg was named president and CEO of Telesat Canada; Goldberg previously launched a successful IPO as president and CEO of SES New Skies.

Prior to completion of the offering, Telesat will incur certain indebtedness, the net proceeds of which together with the net proceeds of the offering will be distributed to BCE.

The offering will be underwritten by a syndicate led by Goldman, Sachs & Co., Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking and RBC

Capital Markets, acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. The U.S. prospectus may be accessed from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at http://www.sec.gov; the Canadian prospectus from the Canadian Securities Administrators at http://www.sedar.com. A registration statement has been filed with the SEC but not yet become effective.