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Paris (Agefi-Dow Jones) — Eiffage has not yet crossed the Rubicon, but it is steadily drawing closer. On Thursday 26 March, the construction and concessions group announced it had acquired an additional 1.74% of Getlink's share capital, bringing its total stake to 29.4% of shares and 29.5% of voting rights in the Channel Tunnel operator.

It now stands just a stone's throw from the 30% threshold that would oblige it to launch a full takeover bid on all Getlink shares.

Having first entered the capital in 2018, Eiffage became the company's largest shareholder in 2022 by acquiring the 13.71% stake held by TCI Fund Management. The group has since continued to buy shares: 1.76% of capital in 2023, 7.11% in October 2025, and now 1.74% on 26 March.

The muted market reaction — Getlink fell just 0.3% on Friday — suggests investors are not pricing in an imminent takeover bid. When Eiffage crossed the 25% threshold last autumn, it had moreover stated that it "does not intend to file a public offer for the remaining capital."

That commitment was not reiterated in the 26 March communication, but the company likely has good reason to wait at least another year before potentially launching a bid. The October acquisition of the 7.11% block included a clause requiring Eiffage to compensate the sellers if the group were to acquire further shares within 18 months at a price above the €17.70 paid at the time — i.e. through to April 2027. In this week's open-market purchases, Eiffage was careful not to exceed that price ceiling, with an average cost of €17.40 per share.

In the longer term, a full acquisition of Getlink could nonetheless make strategic sense for Eiffage. The group faces the expiry of its main concessions within the next decade: APRR and Area will end in November 2035 and September 2036, respectively. Last year, these generated €3.2 billion in revenue, representing 80% of its concessions business — which itself accounts for 16% of Eiffage's total sales and 65% of its operating profit.

In this context, Bank of America analysts, in a note published last January, expressed concern about the group's ability "to replace its expiring concessions (...) given the high prices of mature infrastructure assets on the market, as illustrated by the recent build-up in Getlink." At the current share price of the Channel Tunnel operator, purchasing the 70.6% of capital Eiffage does not yet own would cost it €6.8 billion, compared to the €2.5 billion already deployed since 2018 at an average price of €15.50 per share.

Facing similar challenges, France's other concessions giant, Vinci, announced this week the acquisition of motorways in India for €1.4 billion. Its main French networks, Cofiroute and ASF, will expire in 2034 and 2036 respectively. Vinci is nonetheless less exposed than Eiffage, notably thanks to its diversification into airports: last year, Vinci Autoroutes represented "only" 57% of concessions activities and 35% of the group's total operating profit.

Break out the oxygen masks. The number of breathless headlines is about to soar. SpaceX is expected to file its initial IPO paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission any day now. It will be the confidential version, so we won’t get to see it. But what is usually a procedural nonevent for the public has turned into a carnival thanks to the sky-high numbers bankers are throwing around regarding SpaceX’s offering.

Last week, for instance, we scooped the news that SpaceX’s bankers were saying the company could try to raise more than $75 billion. That’s a bonkers number. All of the companies that went public in the U.S. last year raised $77.5 billion between them, according to Dealogic. (And that was a big increase on the $41.4 billion raised in U.S. IPOs in 2024.) And SpaceX isn’t the only company expected to go public this year.

As we reported separately last week, Anthropic is discussing an IPO as soon as the fourth quarter and bankers think the AI company could raise $60 billion. OpenAI’s IPO is also on the horizon. Is there enough money sloshing around in the market to supply all three in the same 12-month period?

Never say never. In 2021, the boom year fueled by ultralow interest rates, investors poured $316 billion into IPOs. Then again, we haven’t been in that interest rate environment since 2022. And if markets remain as volatile as they are now, at least one of these companies will likely be disappointed.

OpenAI and Anthropic at least have the benefit of phenomenal growth—Anthropic’s annualized sales more than doubled in the first two months of this year, according to our report last week. SpaceX is a different story. Details of its financial performance aren’t readily available, but Reuters has reported that revenue hit around $16 billion last year. In 2022, The Wall Street Journal has reported, SpaceX’s revenue was $4.6 billion. Those two numbers suggest a far more sedate level of growth than the AI firms are enjoying.

It also means SpaceX might have a hard time going public at the valuation of $1.25 trillion Elon Musk put on the company when he combined SpaceX with his xAI. It doesn’t help that the biggest source of SpaceX’s revenue is its Starlink satellite internet service, which is hardly the kind of business one associates with stratospheric valuations. (This story provides a broader reality check.) On the other hand, the Musk following among public investors is enormous. So nothing can be ruled out.

Even so, until investors can see SpaceX’s financial statements—which probably won’t be for a couple more months—we won’t know what a realistic valuation or offering size will be. Banker-driven hype ahead of an offering is standard, but lots can happen to upset bankers’ wishful thinking.

According to sources, French designer Léa Peckre — a winner of Hyères and ANDAM fashion prizes — is joining the French house.

IN THE SADDLE?: It looks like Hermès has recruited a notable design talent as it prepares to launch into haute couture.

According to sources, French designer Léa Peckre is joining the luxury giant. Her title and start date could not immediately be learned, but it is understood she is to work under Nadège Vanhée, artistic director of women’s ready-to-wear at Hermès since 2014.

Peckre recently wrapped up a five-year stint at Celine as design director of women’s rtw, her LinkedIn page details.

Before that, she designed a collection under her own name and staged several runway shows during Paris Fashion Week.

The graduate of famed Brussels fashion school La Cambre shot to fame in 2011 by winning the main prize at the International Festival of Fashion and Photography in Hyères.

Peckre also won ANDAM’s First Collection prize in 2015 and once designed a capsule collection for French lingerie firm Maison Lejaby.

Hermès has been teasing a foray into haute couture for more than a year. While discussing the company’s fourth-quarter results last month, executive chairman Axel Dumas confirmed the atelier is up and running, but he did not reveal a launch date or other particulars.

“What I saw was superb. I’m really quite excited, and I’m very proud of what the teams have done,” he said at the time. “We’ll be ready when we’ll be ready.”

Peckre could not be reached for comment and Hermès did not respond to a request for comment.

It is understood Grace Wales Bonner, the house’s next menswear creative director, is also in the midst of building out her design team ahead of her runway debut for Hermès in January 2027.

The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades

It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.

On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972. The launch window for Artemis II, as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.

Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.

“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September. “But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”

Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.

The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon. Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.

SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission.

Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it. The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.

After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.

Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.

Yes.

For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.

The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.

Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.

Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.

Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.

The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.

Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area. On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.

There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu. Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.

The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.

Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.

NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.

Analysis by the Journal finds four of the largest private-credit funds have more exposure to the software industry than their filings suggest

Many private-credit fund managers are playing down their exposure to software as fears spread about threats from artificial intelligence. A detailed analysis revealed four large funds marketed to individual investors by Apollo Global Management APO -1.42%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Ares Management ARES -1.52%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Blackstone BX -1.42%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Blue Owl Capital OWL -2.00%decrease; red down pointing triangle have more exposure to the software industry than their filings suggest.

Investors’ concerns about the industry’s software exposure helped prompt record withdrawals from private-credit funds in the first quarter. Fund managers contend that AI will affect each software company differently and that some will adapt or even benefit.

The Blue Owl Credit Income Corp. fund had nearly twice as much exposure to software as it reported, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal found, while the discrepancies for the other funds were smaller. On average, the four funds classified about 19% of their investments as software, while the Journal found their average software exposure to be about 25%.

Private-credit funds provide an industry breakdown of their loans to companies each quarter. Software is the biggest category for most of them. Methodologies for categorizing loans vary. Ares said in a filing that it adheres to the independent Global Industry Classification Standard, while others use different methods.

“The way in which [private-credit funds] classify their sector exposures is not uniform,” Barclays analysts said in a report Thursday about stresses in the private-credit market. “This sector ‘massaging’ generates concern from the investor community and makes it difficult to assess degrees of true diversification across funds.”

Private-credit funds say software companies that serve other sectors, such as healthcare, should be reported in those buckets because of their dependence on the industries. That approach predates the recent investor anxiety around software.

The Wall Street Journal reviewed the breakdowns in four of the largest private-credit funds, which make high-interest loans to companies. The Journal used sector tags from data provider PitchBook and its own analysis to identify software-focused companies within private-credit portfolios. It presented each of the fund managers with a list of loans to companies it identified as software companies that the funds didn’t identify as such.

The Journal found that the two funds that grew fastest in the cohort—those of Blackstone and Blue Owl—had more software exposure in other industry buckets. Some in the industry worry the funds’ rapid growth could hurt the quality of their portfolios. Private-credit fund managers depend heavily on a supply of loans from private-equity buyouts, which were concentrated in software companies over the past five years.

The Journal’s analysis found that:

As unease about AI replacement crushed the stocks of public software companies in recent months, some fund managers played down their concentration in the industry or turned the spotlight on competitors. The software companies in private-credit portfolios have higher debt compared with their earnings, on average, than companies in any other sector, according to a recent Morgan Stanley analysis.

“If you look at the private-credit deals that have gone sideways, there’s a software element to the majority of them,” said Alex Chaloff, chief investment officer at Bernstein Private Wealth Management.

Many private-credit fund managers say they believe that fears about software loans are overblown and that they feel good about the quality of their portfolios.

Blue Owl touted its technology investing chops for years and helped pioneer private-credit lending to SaaS companies. After the so-called SaaSpocalypse hit markets in January, the tune appeared to change.

“We’re not negative in any manner on software,” Blue Owl Co-CEO Marc Lipschultz told analysts on a conference call in early February, before pointing out that for the Credit Income fund “actually amongst the peer group, we have the lowest software exposure.”

Some fund managers have altered which companies they include in the category. One of the largest investments in Apollo’s fund is a $239 million loan to Anaplan, a self-described SaaS provider. But the fund recorded the loan as an IT investment for almost three years before changing it to software in March of 2025. The fund reclassified at least two other loans to software in the fourth quarter of 2025.