Auditors

Governance

External Auditor

In accordance with the Luxembourg law on commercial companies, the company’s annual and consolidated accounts are certified by an external auditor appointed by the annual general meeting of shareholders based on a proposal from the Board. PricewaterhouseCoopers (‘PwC’) was appointed for the first time as the company’s auditor for the financial year 2013. 

In 2022, the tenth year of PwC’s engagement as SES’s external auditor, the company held a public tender in connection with the provision of the external audit service to the SES group in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 537/2014 on specific requirements regarding statutory audit of public‑interest entities and with Article 51 of the Luxembourg Law of 23 July 2016 concerning the audit profession. This public tender resulted in the re-appointment of PwC.

Internal Audit

The SES Internal Audit function performs separate evaluations of the relevance of, and compliance with, company policies and internal control procedures.

The mission of the Internal Audit function is to provide independent and objective assurance regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of business operations, the reliability of financial and operational reporting, and the company’s compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. In this context, Internal Audit is also tasked to support management with identifying, preventing and minimising risks, as well as safeguarding the company’s assets.

To ensure an appropriate level of independence and communication, the Internal Audit function has a direct reporting line into the Audit and Risk Committee and reports functionally to the President and CEO.

The activities of the Internal Audit function are executed in accordance with an annual audit plan, which is reviewed and approved by the Audit and Risk Committee. This plan is derived from an annual risk assessment based on a risk mapping exercise relying on the SES risk register. The annual risk assessment responds to the need to dynamically link the audit plan to risks and exposures that may affect the organisation and its operations.

Internal Audit monitors the implementation of internal control recommendations and regularly reports on effective compliance to the Senior Management of SES and to the Audit and Risk Committee.

Internal Audit also regularly coordinates audit planning and exchanges relevant information with the company’s external auditors.

The proxy structure of the SES Government Solutions entity, in line with common practice for businesses serving certain segments of the US Government, imposes various restrictions on the Board and executive management in directly supervising the maintenance of an internal control system and imposing an internal audit structure.

The SES Internal Audit function does not perform any direct internal control review of this entity during 2018, in line with the imposed restrictions. However, these restrictions are mitigated through having agreement on a required risk management and internal control framework which is subject to evaluation and testing by a third-party internal audit function. An adequate reporting process of activities of the third-party audit function to the SES Internal Audit function and Audit and Risk Committee has been put in place.

It should be further noted that PwC, as external auditor, reviews the financial statements of SES Government Solutions.