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JPMorgan is heading a competition to acquire a French cooling company, positioning Wall Street capital at the center of one of Europe's most charged policy-market contradictions.
As France reels from record heat, the bank's front-running role signals institutional conviction that the country's long-standing cultural resistance to air-conditioning has produced a structural demand gap large enough to anchor an acquisition.
The bid lands at a moment when ordinary Parisians — left to manage summer heat with open windows and little other infrastructure — are making the cost of that resistance impossible to ignore.
An Elite Consensus Against Air-Conditioning France's establishment spent years characterizing air-conditioning as American excess.
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