TheChek News Flow

There are more important things to consider when moving countries than tax

Relocating to a low-tax jurisdiction often involves unforeseen legal, emotional and social costs

Lunching in late February with clients who had announced they were leaving the UK was hard, particularly because one of the couple had had a life-threatening illness and the other seemed very reluctant to go. They told me that the principal drivers were tax and fear of the direction of travel of the current government. I did not see it as my job to deter them from departing, but I did see it as my responsibility to challenge their decision and their choice of destination.

Most clients identify tax as the most important consideration when weighing up a move, smitten by the allure of no tax or low tax. But, for me, there are two fundamental questions: can you see yourselves living your life, not just existing, in your chosen jurisdiction? And, contrarily, are you prepared to live your life constrained by the UK’s tax rules? Or, as I put it to my clients, when you have had a brush with death, why abandon family, friends and home to save tax?

If you are considering relocating to a new jurisdiction, there are plenty of questions to ask that are not tax-based. The lawyer will focus on the structure of legal relationships, the economist on geopolitics and the generalist on whether this is a lifestyle you will enjoy. Moving is costly both in financial terms and also emotionally so should be carefully analysed.

With my lawyer hat on, I note that many of the countries on the desirable low-tax or no-tax list have very different regimes governing, among other things, relationships, matrimonial property, divorce and loss of capacity. These topics may not be top of clients’ minds, but they are crucial for a successful move.

What does “marriage” mean in the new jurisdiction? Many countries (but not all) now permit same-sex marriages or civil law partnerships. Some, such as Portugal, recognise de facto partnerships, which are very different from the UK, where “common-law marriage” does not exist, a widespread misconception. De facto marriage confers rights on partners that would not be recognised in the UK — an unwelcome surprise to an unmarried couple if the relationship unravels after the move.

Similarly, there is no concept of community property for married couples in the UK. If they move from the UK to Switzerland, a community-property country, they need to check what the impact is on their assets and they should probably execute a postnuptial agreement to ensure the status quo is preserved.

What happens if you lose mental capacity? As populations in the west grow older, more families are having to deal with parents losing decision-making capacity. The position in the UK can be managed by clients executing lasting powers of attorney for property and financial affairs and for health and welfare. It is similar in Switzerland, but this is not the case in many other civil law countries, where there is no such instrument.

What happens to assets on death? Most civil law countries have a regime we call forced heirship: the children have fixed rights and to that extent parents cannot disinherit them. The EU introduced legislation that mitigates this feature by permitting the deceased’s law of nationality to govern their estate, but the person making the will has to elect for this to happen — it does not happen automatically.

By contrast, Irish law guarantees a surviving spouse a fixed share of the estate. We had a client who owned a landed estate there and we were advised his wife would be entitled to a one-third share on his death. She had to renounce her legal right to that share so that the overall estate plan could be fulfilled.

Finally, and in my view, most importantly, can you see yourself living there? What is it that makes your life joyful and will you find it in your chosen jurisdiction? My passion is theatre, ballet and opera. I am told London has more than 230 theatres. Where else could compete?

One client on a Zoom call 18 months into his relocation complained he was miserable because none of the local population were interested in forming new friendships. He had cracked the language and endeavoured to mix but without a dog or a child it was hard to make connections. No one was interested in the arrival in their community of yet another expat. I was blamed because he claimed I had forced him to leave the UK. I had not!

My lunch guests left the UK before the end of the tax year on April 6. They had done their due diligence and set great store by the lifestyle offered by their new home. But they are now condemned to a life of day-counting.

Bond Street’s loss is Sloane Street’s gain in London’s luxury retail landscape

Amid a decline in tourist spending in Mayfair, the high number of wealthy local shoppers is luring fashion brands to Chelsea

It’s a sunny spring Wednesday afternoon and Chelsea’s Pavilion Road is buzzing. Groups of twenty-somethings clad in preppy gear catch up over drinks, stylish mums with kids in tow browse the cheesemonger, friends enjoy ice cream cones while strolling down the mews road.

It’s a picture perfect scene of affluent Londoners at leisure that is quintessentially Chelsea. It is also what is driving many independent fashion brands to open up shop on the glossiest thoroughfare in the wealthy west London neighbourhood: Sloane Street. 

“I never thought we were going to end up in Chelsea,” says Alice Temperley, founder of the eponymous brand. Temperley had a flagship store in Mayfair’s Bruton Street that closed in 2020. When, in 2024, she reopened a London location, Temperley picked the southern end of Sloane Street. “There are restaurants, bars, it’s a very nice sociable shopping experience,” she says by way of explanation.

Since 2024, labels including Veronica Beard, Toteme, Jessica McCormack, Zimmermann, Roksanda, Erdem, Ulla Johnson, DeMellier and Ami have followed Temperley in opening or announcing upcoming openings on or near Sloane Street — a marked move away from Bond Street and Mayfair.

Chelsea, Sloane Street and King’s Road have a long association with fashion, from the Swinging Sixties to the punk avant-garde of the 1970s to the Sloane Rangers of the 1980s. But while the area has always been attractive for retailers, the appeal of the south end of Sloane Street has recently been boosted by several factors, including landlord Cadogan Estates’ funding of a makeover of the street and nearby Sloane Square through a £60mn investment.

The works included widening pavements and adding new greenery, street furniture and better lighting to encourage shoppers to walk Sloane Street’s full length. Hugh Seaborn, Cadogan Estates chief executive, reports that in the first two and a half months of 2026, footfall was up 9.3 per cent and trade increased 6 per cent compared with the same period in 2025. Seaborn explains that retail partners “were seeking an enhanced environment within which to trade, and that’s what we delivered”.

Beyond Cadogan’s improvements, brands are being lured to Sloane Street by the presence of reliable and wealthy local consumers. Since the pandemic, and the drop in international travel that came with it, brands have been working on reducing their dependence on tourist spending, which in the UK capital was also hit by the abolition of the VAT Retail Export Scheme in 2021.

Labels are now focusing on finding meaningful ways to nurture links with consumers on their home turf. In this context, Chelsea has become an important target for retail expansion in London, more so than other comparable high-end locations, such as Bond Street, where the bulk of footfall is represented by international visitors rather than residents. Notting Hill’s Westbourne Grove is another west London locale that has received a glossy fillip from new international boutique openings.

“Our customer lives there. So whether she is taking the tube to work, or she is dropping her child off school, or she is having lunch on Pavilion Road, she is in that area multiple times per week,” says Stephanie Unwin, president of US brand Veronica Beard, which opened its second London store in Sloane Street in 2024. The first one, in Mayfair’s Bruton Street, is not “necessarily in her path unless she is working in that area”, Unwin adds.

For Australian resort brand Zimmermann, which also opened a second London location on Sloane Street in February, the appeal was to have a “local store for a lot of our customers”, says co-founder and chief operating officer Simone Zimmermann. “Sloane Street is a community, is a home.”

At €7,327 per square foot per year, a store in Slone Street is also considerably more affordable than one in Bond Street, which comes at €19,228 per square foot, according to data from estate agent Savills. The West End shopping destination, which at the end of 2025 was the world’s most expensive location for retailers, is out of reach for most of the aspirational, independent brands that have recently flocked to Sloane Street. Many of Bond Street’s vast flagships often appear to be empty of customers, too.

“If you are going to Bond Street you have to spend a fortune,” says Temperley, highlighting the street’s high property rates but also the need to renovate more dated stores. For Nicolas Santi-Weil, chief executive of French brand Ami, which opened a store on Sloane Street in May, the advantageous financials played a part in the decision as well as the opportunity to work with a “clear” space and agreeing on a one-and-a half-year lease that can be extended. 

“We thought, it’s a good way to try this neighbourhood,” he says. “At first we were more looking in Mayfair, but then this opportunity came up. The agent showed us how many brands were opening. There is a huge footfall and we know we work pretty well when the footfall is high, so we decided to give it a try.”

Many of the new openings have focused on the southern end of Sloane Street, sitting between King’s Road, which is dominated by high-street retailers, and the northern end, which is preferred by high-end labels such as Chanel, Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli. Because of the location, and the brands’ price point, these stores have the opportunity to capture both demographics.

“It’s like a bridge between luxury and lower-priced brands, so for us it was a really important location. Both customers are our customers,” says Mireia Llusia-Lindh, founder of handbag brand DeMellier, which is opening a store in Sloane Square in the autumn.

“A lot of our competitors are in Regent Street or Covent Garden, but Chelsea felt very British, very London, very elevated,” she adds. “Besides, it doesn’t get more iconic than Sloane Square.”

Nordex CEO José Luis Blanco says region’s ‘supply chain independence’ must be protected

The boss of one of Europe’s biggest wind turbine makers has called for “non-western” rivals to be blocked from selling in the EU in a warning about the perceived threat posed by Chinese technology to the bloc’s security and industrial future.

José Luis Blanco, chief executive of Hamburg-based Nordex, said the EU had not gone far enough with proposed regulations requiring projects that receive public support to use equipment made in the bloc and exclude “high-risk” suppliers. Many renewables projects fell outside the rules, he said.

“We believe the western-origin principle should therefore apply to all new wind capacity connecting to European grids, not only publicly supported projects,” Blanco told the FT, adding that “non-western” turbine makers should be designated as high risk under cyber security rules.

With Chinese companies the only big turbine makers outside the US and Europe, his call marked the latest sign of concern about reliance on the nation’s technology, whose presence in the telecommunications and automotive sectors has already sparked alarm.

“It’s about supply chain independence and technology independence,” said Blanco. “The key issue is not where servers are located, but who controls the software and access to the systems.”

China’s turbine suppliers have been taking market share from their US and European rivals by offering lower-cost products and faster delivery, prompting accusations that they receive unfair state support.

José Manuel Entrecanales, chief executive of Nordex’s largest shareholder, the Spain-based conglomerate Acciona, said during the same interview: “[With] critical infrastructure, you have to be aware that accepting the competition of not-liberal-democracy-type players is a dangerous game.”

Chinese manufacturers’ strength in renewable energy supply chains has led to previous calls for protectionist measures across Europe, with the UK recently blocking China-based Ming Yang in its offshore wind sector on national security risk grounds.

The EU this month said it would block public funding for Chinese inverters, a crucial technology used to control solar panels and wind turbines, with a spokesperson citing a “pressing” threat to critical infrastructure. Earlier this year, it launched a probe into turbine maker Goldwind over potential unfair subsidies.

But increased protectionism is likely to raise questions about the bloc’s commitment to competition. It could make Europe’s green energy projects more expensive, while provoking retaliation from China, which supplies hardware to Nordex and other turbine makers in the region.

The complaints come even as European companies such as Nordex, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa dominate the regional market with more than 90 per cent of sales. Nordex last year made almost 84 per cent of its €7.5bn revenue in Europe. 

The groups have been facing increased competition from rivals such as Goldwind and Windey, backed by Beijing, and privately owned Ming Yang. That has triggered fears in Europe of a repeat of the disappearance of most of its solar panel manufacturing sector, which left the bloc reliant on imports.  

Entrecanales said: “We’ve probably lost the race in solar PV, we are probably close to losing the race or [are] very far behind in storage.”

Wind was probably the only big climate change technology in which Europe was “racing with some capability” of being competitive, he added.

The China Chamber of Commerce to the EU said a “discriminatory approach” would undermine fair competition and the principles underpinning the region’s single market.

Suppliers should be judged on “objective criteria such as safety, quality and performance — rather than being excluded on the basis of nationality or ownership”, it added.

The European Commission said it had already taken “important steps” to improve cyber security in wind turbines and that “high-risk suppliers” would be excluded from auctions for renewable energy projects when proposed legislation comes into effect.

Regulatory loosening has allowed countries’ banks to expand balance sheets while EU and Swiss rivals are constrained

Regulatory loosening has allowed top American and British banks to expand their balance sheets by $1.3tn in the past two quarters, new research shows, widening a gap with their more constrained EU and Swiss rivals.

Deregulation by Washington and London will enable big US and UK banks to grow their assets by a total of $2.9tn while greater capital requirements for seven of the EU’s biggest banks will squeeze their balance sheet capacity by €1.3tn, according to research by consultancy Alvarez & Marsal.

US regulators have ushered in a wave of bank deregulation since Donald Trump became president last year, watering down many of the rules imposed after the 2008 financial crash that forced banks to raise bigger loss-absorbing buffers.

Reforms will free up capacity for eight of the biggest Wall Street lenders — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, BNY and State Street — to expand their balance sheets by $2.5tn, or 15 per cent, roughly equivalent to adding another Citigroup.

In the UK, three big British banks are set to benefit from a $12bn reduction in their capital requirements, the research found, enabling them to grow their assets by $400bn. 

HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered, the three most international UK lenders, have already responded by growing their assets $200bn in the past two quarters.

“Global regulators are taking different paths in bank capital reform,” said Fernando de la Mora, co-head of financial services at Alvarez & Marsal. “The US is going fast and furious. The UK is following, maybe at a slower pace than anticipated, but we will see more.”

Seven of the top EU lenders — BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Santander, Crédit Agricole, BPCE, Société Générale and ING — are set to have their combined capital requirements raised by €39bn in a sign of how the post-financial crisis regulatory consensus is fracturing.

EU banks still hope to persuade policymakers to dilute capital requirements and executives are pressing the European Commission to provide relief.

Switzerland, however, is tightening its banking rules more aggressively. Swiss authorities are locked in dispute with the country’s biggest lender UBS over a proposal to raise its capital requirements by $20bn, which would reduce its asset capacity by $400bn.

US banks have continued to gain market share in wholesale banking since the start of last year, growing their fixed income and equity trading revenues 5 per cent faster than their European rivals in that period, Alvarez & Marsal said.

Goldman Sachs has been the biggest beneficiary, with a 3 percentage point drop in its capital needs, the research found. In the first quarter, Goldman seized on this to slash its core equity tier one capital from 15.1 per cent to 13.3 per cent. Its total assets rose 8 per cent to $1.95tn.

There are further signs US deregulation is achieving one of its stated goals by boosting banks’ ability to trade more government debt. Net Treasury inventories held by the big US banks rose to about $550bn this year, up from less than $400bn last year, according to FT calculations.

“Almost all the money the US banks made in profits, they distributed to their shareholders,” de la Mora said. “But they were still able to deploy more capital to their businesses by expanding their balance sheets, by doing more lending and increasing capital markets activities.” 

Extension of emissions trading scheme opposed by flag carriers

Major European airlines are each exposed to a hit of at least an additional €1.5bn in costs if Brussels extends carbon pricing to flights leaving the EU, based on analysis of a proposal to curb greenhouse emissions.

The FT reported earlier this month that the EU was considering extending its emissions trading system (ETS) to cover flights departing from the bloc, as it revises the system that underpins Europe’s push to decarbonise its industries.

But the move would probably add to costs as airlines grapple with challenges, including high jet fuel prices, and could stoke trade tensions with the US.

Projections from Transition Metrics, a consultancy advising investors on carbon pricing, show it would most affect flag carriers Lufthansa, British Airways parent IAG Group and Air France-KLM, with extra costs of €1.8bn, €1.7bn and €1.5bn respectively in 2027, leading to total costs of more than €2bn for each airline.

These outlays would amount to about 44 per cent of Lufthansa’s 2025 earnings, 23 per cent for IAG Group and 30 per cent for Air France-KLM, according to the projections.

Jan Ahrens, managing director of Transition Metrics, estimated that full ETS coverage would add €100 to a Frankfurt-Beijing ticket if carbon costs were passed on to passengers.

“These costs are not trivial, they’re material,” he said. “The companies have a problem now because they don’t know how to hedge their 2027 compliance. Ticket sales for long-haul [flights] start now for 2027.”

The calculations are based on the airlines’ current carbon emissions and a projected carbon price of €120 per tonne — well above the forward price of €78.06 per tonne for 2027. Transition Metrics said this was realistic if the full extension of the ETS was undertaken.

The ETS seeks to drive green investment by requiring companies to buy or hold allowances to cover their CO₂ emissions, creating a financial incentive to decarbonise.

It presently applies only to intra-EU flights. This means that continental operators such as Ryanair, EasyJet and Wizz Air face far greater carbon costs than long-haul rivals.

But officials are considering extending this further to all flights departing the bloc, after international efforts to cut airline emissions have floundered.

An international scheme to offset carbon emissions from flights — the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (Corsia) — lacks the formal backing of countries that are the biggest emitters, including the US, India and China. It is based on voluntary participation by governments, whose airlines must then comply.

The Commission is assessing its effectiveness before deciding to extend the scope of ETS to departing flights, Polona Gregorin, a climate official, told a stakeholder event this month.

One senior official said the “jury was out on [Corsia’s] effectiveness . . . the track record has not been meeting what everyone thinks the gold standard would be”.

In 2012, when the EU last considered extending the emissions trading scheme, it sparked fierce opposition from the US and China, and the Obama administration signed a bill exempting US airlines.

The executive director of the Aerospace, Security and Defence group, Vincent de Vroey, warned of a repeat, telling the stakeholder event that “we will again have a trade war that will be even worse”.

Lufthansa and IAG Group did not respond to requests for comment. Trade body Airlines for Europe said the EU should instead focus on strengthening Corsia.

Air France said in a recent paper it “firmly opposes any extension” to departing flights that would make it less competitive against non-EU carriers and “risk triggering retaliation from third countries”. Its own calculations for 2030 forecast an additional cost of €950mn compared with the current scope.

The senior commission official said the EU had to “acknowledge the complicated geopolitics” of the move but also said the fact aviation emissions had not fallen as in other transport sectors over the past 20 years required a response.

Streaming app strikes deal with Universal allowing subscribers to create ‘controlled’ covers and remixes

Spotify co-chief executive Alex Norström has defended the company’s expansion into AI-generated music, arguing that “controlled” products offer a better alternative to the unregulated AI “slop” already spreading online.

“There’s a lot of rogue attempts at this,” Norström said in an interview with the FT, referring to tools to make music with AI. He said Spotify wants to be “the one that’s legal” and “the one that’s controlled”.

On Thursday, the company struck a deal with Universal Music that will allow subscribers to create AI-generated covers and remixes of songs from participating artists.

The tool — which will cost extra money — would allow “one song to become 10,000 songs” inside Spotify’s app, Norström told investors, as part of a raft of announcements that sent the stock up 18 per cent. The companies have not disclosed how much the feature will cost on top of a standard Spotify subscription.

While Universal has previously reached AI deals with smaller start-ups, Spotify is the first major streaming platform to launch a commercial AI music product with label backing. The agreement marks a significant moment for the music industry, with the dominant streaming service now openly embracing AI-generated music.

Speaking to the FT, Norström acknowledged there was a growing backlash from artists and listeners over “AI slop” flooding digital platforms.

“There’s some negativity out there about AI, for sure,” he said. “I think it’s reasonable because some of it is misaligned AI.” 

But Norström argued Spotify’s licensing agreements, recommendation systems and artist verification tools would help distinguish its approach.

He said Spotify and Universal Music had spent time negotiating the agreement through “several discussions”. “We had to kind of find our way there,” he said, describing the deal as a “win-win situation” for Spotify, artists and rightsholders.

Norström said Spotify wanted to avoid the kind of AI-driven experiences that “make you feel good in the moment” but ultimately leave users feeling they had “wasted” their time.

The deal comes at a sensitive moment, as creative industries fear that AI could undermine human work. Last week producer Jack Antonoff slammed what he called the “new ways you can fake making art”. 

In the US, unease over AI has intensified in recent months, with protests erupting over new data centres and students booing references to artificial intelligence at university commencement ceremonies.

Spotify last month introduced a verification badge intended to distinguish human artists from AI-generated content after “we heard the industry”, Norström said.

“There’s a lot of AI slop out there. I mean, fraud and abuse, we’ve been fighting forever,” he added.

Universal, the largest record label, which is home to artists including Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar and Lady Gaga, has licensed its music to several AI groups in recent months, including Udio, Klay Vision and Stability AI. 

Despite growing competition from start-ups, Norström argued Spotify’s scale and industry relationships gave it an advantage.

“Compared to a start-up . . . our investment per subscriber is essentially going to be minuscule,” he said. “Scale begets scale here . . . winners win more.

DLA Piper’s mega-dreams

DLA Piper handles more corporate deals than any other law firm globally, but they are often the smaller, less glamorous transactions overlooked by Wall Street.

The firm, with its nearly 5,000 lawyers across 40 countries, is making its biggest push to break into the elite of law firms advising on headline megadeals.

It is adding West Coast-based technology dealmaker Michael Dorf to its ranks of partners, who will join from A&O Shearman in the coming days, DD reveals.

This comes on the heels of former Goodwin Procter partner Amanda Gill joining DLA earlier this month.

The roster of corporate dealmakers is being assembled by DLA’s new public company M&A chair Viktor Sapezhnikov, who joined from corporate law powerhouse Wachtell Lipton late last year.

Some $2tn of deals have been recorded globally this year, according to LSEG. It is DLA’s ambition to advise on a larger share of them. 

Re-engineering a law firm to compete for advisory roles on large deals has proved a mixed success for DLA’s rivals. A&O has struggled since the merger combining Allen & Overy and Shearman Sterling, while UK law firm Freshfields and capital markets powerhouse Latham & Watkins have soared up the M&A league tables in recent years.

Since arriving at DLA, Sapezhnikov has steered chipmaker Silicon Labs’ $7.5bn sale to Texas Instruments and Trump Media & Technology Group’s $6bn merger with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies alongside 28-year DLA veteran John Gilluly.

AI and the brave new world of deals

Global M&A is now dominated by the race to control the world’s energy, fibre networks and compute

The dawn of a new dealmaking era

Earlier this month, two US utilities announced a $420bn deal that would’ve been unthinkable a few years ago.

But in the dawn of the AI era, the tie-up of NextEra and Dominion has a clear logic.

At the heart of the deal is energy, the fuel of the AI boom. Dominion is the main supplier of power to “data centre alley” in northern Virginia, one of America’s hottest markets for the energy-hungry infrastructure.

The deal also exemplifies how AI has changed which companies matter. Utilities, long among the dullest corners of corporate America, have become gatekeepers to the infrastructure underpinning economic and geopolitical power.

It’s buoyed by the optimism that with Donald Trump relaxing antitrust enforcement and boosting AI development, regulatory approval is likely.

The NextEra-Dominion deal is the latest example of how AI has upended dealmaking, DD reporters detail in a Big Read, even as the future profits of AI companies remain uncertain.

Winning the AI race requires immense scale, far vaster than the software groups that grew with little demand for physical infrastructure. Training and operating new models requires chips, energy, fibre networks, data centres and financing measured not in billions, but trillions of dollars.

“The demand for capital from this global industrial renaissance that we’re going through is just off the charts,” Marc Rowan, Apollo’s chief executive, told investors late last year.

The boom has changed how transactions are structured and who finances them, with private capital giants such as BlackRock, Blackstone and Apollo rushing to make aggressive AI-related investments.

Blackstone argues greenfield projects in emerging sectors at times can be more profitable than the traditional strategy of acquiring existing businesses at a steep premium.

But for smaller players in the private capital industry, particularly midsized buyout firms, the AI boom has been punishing, squeezing the software groups that were at the centre of a decade-long private equity dealmaking spree.

Meanwhile, hardware groups such as Sandisk that were long dismissed as low-growth relics in a market obsessed with high-margin software have had their fortunes turn, as demand for data storage and computing capacity has surged.

The boom has also spurred innovation in how deals are structured. Hyperscalers have adopted a new M&A playbook to bypass regulatory delays with so-called “acquihires” — licensing a start-up’s intellectual property and hiring its top talent without acquiring the corporate entity.

But the seemingly unstoppable momentum faces a rapidly changing environment.

Capital markets will soon have to absorb initial public offerings of a size never experienced before, with SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic all set to be valued at about $1tn or more apiece. Some investors question the maths and the projected profits of the companies involved, evoking the memory of the dotcom bubble.

And Americans are lashing out against data centres and AI more broadly, which they blame for increasing electricity bills, threatening jobs and disrupting their communities.

AI has reoriented global M&A around a furious race to control the world’s energy, fibre networks and computing capacity. The question is, how long will the boom last?

Starlink et Amazon redessinent à marche forcée la bataille mondiale des satellites en orbite basse. Face à cette offensive, l’Europe tente de construire une riposte autour d’Eutelsat et de sa constellation OneWeb.

Dans les hangars d’ArianeGroup à Brême, près de Hambourg en Allemagne, les équipes s’activent. La partie supérieure d’une fusée Ariane 64 doit encore être assemblée. Dans ce décor ultraclinique immaculé de blanc, chaque geste est millimétré. Sur place, les équipes du client américain, Amazon LEO, observent les opérations. Quelques jours plus tard, c’était le 27 avril dernier, une salve de 32 satellites LEO a décollé avec succès grâce à une fusée de ce type.

Pour ArianeGroup, le contrat est majeur, d’autant que les clients commerciaux européens préfèrent souvent utiliser SpaceX : 18 lancements sont déjà prévus avec le géant américain. « Ceci est notre plus gros contrat en termes de lancements », confirme Martijn Rogier van Delden, le responsable du développement commercial Europe d’Amazon, même s’il utilise aussi les fusées d’Elon Musk (SpaceX) et Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin).

Avec sa constellation, composée, à terme, de 3 200 satellites en orbite basse – pour l’instant seuls 200 ont été lancées – Amazon veut concurrencer SpaceX sur le marché de l’Internet spatial. Ces satellites LEO (low earth orbit ou en orbite basse), situés entre 160 et 1 000 kilomètres d’altitude, promettent une connexion plus rapide et une latence réduite. Alors que le marché mondial de la connectivité doit progresser de 12 % par an d’ici à 2029 pour atteindre une dizaine de milliards d’euros, ce sera du 28 % pour LEO.

Stratégie tout-en-un

Le décollage de l’orbite basse remonte à une dizaine d’années, avec les premiers tirs en série de Starlink. Depuis, SpaceX a imposé sa loi dans le spatial grâce à une stratégie redoutable : tout intégrer. Satellites, fusées, réutilisation de lanceurs, antennes, distribution et services… « Le groupe d’Elon Musk contrôle l’ensemble de la chaîne de valeur, là où les acteurs traditionnels se partageaient jusqu’alors les différents métiers du secteur, précise Paul Wohrer, responsable du programme espace à l’Institut français des relations internationales. C’est ce qu’on appelle dans le spatial une approche verticale. » Starlink a dépassé les 10 000 satellites en orbite basse. En France, 160 000 clients y sont connectés.

Pour Xavier Pasco, directeur de la Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, Starlink constitue une véritable manne financière pour les ambitions spatiales d’Elon Musk : « Plus il y aura de satellites en orbite, plus cela générera de ressources pour Starship et les projets de conquête de Mars. C’est aussi une démonstration de puissance face aux acteurs historiques du secteur. »

Pour couronner le tout, le groupe prépare une introduction en Bourse, attendue dès le mois de juin, afin de lever des dizaines de milliards de dollars. Quant à Jeff Bezos, qui s’est lancé dans l’aventure en 2000, deux ans avant Elon Musk, son empire spatial (Amazon Leo, Blue Origin) vient de s’agrandir avec la récente acquisition de la constellation Globalstar pour 12 milliards de dollars.

La contre-offensive s’organise

Le déclic européen ? « La guerre en Ukraine a mis en évidence le rôle stratégique de Starlink et suscité une prise de conscience », décrypte un bon connaisseur du spatial, tout en constatant que « nous n’avons pas de masse critique d’investissement pour faire face ». La réponse européenne repose plutôt sur la souveraineté, les partenariats et l’intégration des réseaux terrestres.

« Les Etats-Unis bénéficient d’un environnement d’investissement plus centralisé, souligne Tim Hatt, analyste pour GSMA, le lobby international des télécommunications. Les entreprises européennes disposent d’une solide expertise technique, mais les financements sont déployés de manière plus progressive. Cela affecte la vitesse de mise en orbite et la taille des constellations, deux facteurs-clés de compétitivité en orbite basse. »

La contre-offensive s’organise autour d’Eutelsat et de sa constellation OneWeb. En 2023, l’opérateur français a mis la main sur le britannique avec, à la clé, 650 satellites déjà déployés en orbite basse. « La constellation en orbite basse constitue aujourd’hui un moteur central de notre croissance », explique-t-on chez Eutelsat. Même si, contrairement à Starlink, il ne s’agit pas de séduire le grand public, mais surtout les entreprises et les gouvernements. Lors de son dernier exercice, cette activité LEO aura généré 187 millions d’euros de chiffre d’affaires, soit 15 % de l’activité d’Eutelsat.

« On veut en être »

Pour accélérer la cadence, Eutelsat multiplie les investissements. Le groupe a signé avec Airbus pour renouveler 400 satellites de sa constellation. Et il a bouclé en décembre dernier une recapitalisation de 1,5 milliard d’euros qui va aussi servir à refinancer sa dette, aujourd’hui de 2,6 milliards, pour réduire les frais financiers. Ce montant permettrait également de préparer l’arrivée prévue d’Iris², la future constellation souveraine voulue par l’Union européenne, à laquelle Eutelsat contribue.

D’autres se réveillent. Airbus, Thales et Leonardo ont signé en octobre 2025 un protocole d’accord pour rapprocher leurs activités spatiales. Le projet prévoit une nouvelle société basée à Toulouse qui regrouperait environ 25 000 personnes pour 6,5 milliards d’euros de chiffre d’affaires annuel. « La demande de lanceurs pour envoyer des satellites dans l’espace est en constante hausse, la cadence s’accélère et on veut en être », confirme Pierre Godart, le directeur financier d’ArianeGroup.

Des annonces sont attendues en septembre, lors du Sommet spatial international prévu à Paris. L’occasion pour l’Elysée de faire adopter une déclaration en faveur d’un partage plus équitable des fréquences, et d’obtenir de l’Allemagne et de l’Italie une position commune face à la pression exercée par les mégaconstellations américaines. Il y a urgence.