Objet: La Lettre de L'Expansion, 31 August 2026: summary
Summary of La Lettre de L'Expansion, 31 August 2026.
Editorial
Yves de Kerdrel warns of a possible Le Pen versus Mélenchon run-off. The LFI candidate polls at 16 to 17 % and is, for the first time, within reach of the second round. The editorial describes his platform as a blueprint for ruin: partial debt restructuring, income tax above the confiscatory threshold set by the Constitutional Council, a revived wealth tax, and disobedience of EU treaties.
Cover story: gas ahead of winter
EU storage stood at 62 % on 21 August against 74 % a year earlier, with Germany at 50 % and France at 65 %. Since the closure of Hormuz in March, traffic has collapsed by 95 % and 17 % of Qatari export capacity is out of service for three to five years. TTF has moved from 32 to 63.70 euros per MWh. The issue is price rather than volume: the United States already supplies 57 % of Europe's LNG and could reach 80 % by 2028-2030, matching the pre-war dependence on Russian gas. France's regulated reference price rises another 5.6 % on 1 September. Forward curves point to 46 euros in 2027, then 30 and 25 euros.
Deals
Ardian has been hit by Belgium's first foreign investment veto, blocking the sale of helicopter operator NHV to China's GDAT, echoing the Photonis case and its roughly 30 % valuation discount. Panoro Energy is buying a third of Foxtrot from DNO, implying a valuation of about 760m dollars for Côte d'Ivoire's CI-27 gas block and close to 350m dollars for the Bouygues family's discreet stake. AXA XL is acquiring the balance of cyber advisory firm S-RM ahead of its 15 September strategic plan. Louis Roederer has bought Domaine Pierre Damoy for around 300m euros, close to 40m euros per hectare of grand cru. Meridiam is preparing a bid for the Bosphorus bridges while taking 66 % of the Greece-Cyprus interconnector. Thales issued one billion euros of bonds in two tranches to fund its 3.9bn euro acquisition of Exail.
Long view
A forty-year retrospective on European deindustrialisation: electricity two to three times more expensive than in the United States, gas roughly five times, French production taxes at 2.7 % of GDP against 0.7 % in Germany, and EU GDP down to two thirds of the US level by 2023.