EU’s Nightmare Year Ends With Le Pen Risk Haunting Investors
- Fund managers see French election as biggest political risk
- Le Pen running second, promises French a vote on leaving EU
Marine Le Pen.
Photographer: Marlene Awaad/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be the anchor that has held the European project firm through a decade of crises, yet it isn’t her fight for re-election next year that is keeping investors awake at night. That honor goes to France.
Voters will choose new leaders in the Netherlands, then France and Germany over the next 12 months -- with Italy and Greece conceivably also triggering snap elections. Amid this unprecedented concentration of major ballots, it is the low-probability, high-impact prospect of Marine Le Pen entering the Elysee in Paris that’s of most concern to five fund managers contacted for this article.