Except that today, this system no longer works. “Given the unprecedented prices of electricity, these guarantees become unaffordable because they are linked to the value of the contract“, emphasizes Charles Cuvelliez. “A producer can dip into his cash flow. A supplier does not have these means and must ask financial players to cover it.”
The risk is therefore that suppliers in difficulty lose the confidence of the financial markets. And this is where the specter of Lehman Brothers arises. “If we talk about the Lehman Brothers phenomenon for energy, it is because we are facing the same questions today: those of confidence and risks. In 2008, some banks no longer had the confidence of the financial markets, which no longer wanted to lend liquidity to these establishments. They found themselves in cessation of payments. To put an end to this spiral, at the time, the States provided their guarantee to the banks and confidence returned.