Iridium Holdings, the satellite phone company, is to return to the stock market a decade after filing for bankruptcy, reports the Financial Times. Iridium will be acquired by a special purpose acquisition company affiliated with Greenhill & Co, the US investment bank, which has US$400 million in cash and is seeking to raise a further US$160 million through a share offering. The transaction will value the Nasdaq-listed firm – renamed Iridium Communications – at US$560 million. Funds will be used to launch a new satellite phone service costing around US$2.7 billion. In its original incarnation, Iridium was spun out of Motorola and launched a handheld satellite phone service in 1998. However, it filed for bankruptcy protection a year later as it service failed to compete with land-based mobile networks and devices.

According to the Financial Times, the new company will this time not focus on the consumer market but on specialist commercial users in the maritime, forestry, oil refinery and other industries. Matt Desch, chief executive, also believes the company has a growing business in machine-to-machine communications. Northern Sky Research estimated that the total market for mobile satellite services was worth US$1.7 billion last year. Iridium will compete in the market with firms such as the UK’s Inmarsat and US firms, Orbcomm and Globalstar.