But when you actually follow the money, the picture becomes much more interesting.
France has just seen further evidence of this. In August 2026, inflation rose to 2.4 per cent year-on-year. However, it is neither food nor wages that are the main drivers of this surge: energy prices have soared by 16.7 per cent year-on-year and petroleum products by 28.7 per cent. Diesel, for its part, was up by as much as 36.4 per cent.
This is where the real crisis economy begins: when an external event suddenly makes an essential product scarce or expensive, some players bear the brunt of the rise, others pass it on, and a few may reap a considerable windfall.
The case of oil and gas is almost a caricature. During the 2022 energy crisis, the International Energy Agency estimated that the global net income of oil and gas producers could double in a single year to reach around 4,000 billion dollars. Not because these companies had suddenly doubled their output, but because the price of what they owned had skyrocketed.
The phenomenon was spectacular enough for the European Union to introduce a one-off levy on the excess profits of oil, gas, coal and refining companies. The European regulation defined profits exceeding the average of previous years by more than 20 per cent as ‘surplus’ and provided for a levy of at least 33 per cent. In other words, the existence of exceptional crisis-related profits was not merely an activist slogan: it had been recognised even in European law.
But we must guard against another oversimplification: the notion that every company which raises its prices automatically becomes a profiteer.
The food sector provides an excellent example. Between January 2021 and January 2023, farm-gate prices rose by 30.7 per cent and the selling prices of agri-food manufacturers by 29.5 per cent. INSEE estimates that at least three-quarters of the increases in agricultural costs are ultimately passed on in manufacturers’ prices.
One might conclude that manufacturers have been lining their pockets. That would be too simplistic.
The Senate’s commission of inquiry, whose report was published in May 2026, notes that the profit margin in the agri-food industry did indeed experience a spectacular rise, climbing from a low of 28.4 per cent at the end of 2021 to 49 per cent in the third quarter of 2023. However, the analysis by the Directorate-General for Enterprise does not conclude that there was widespread opportunistic ‘excess profit’: in particular, it describes a period during which companies initially absorbed part of the surge in their costs before passing them on with a delay.
The uncomfortable reality is therefore more nuanced: not all manufacturers are profiting from the crisis, nor are all retailers. It is primarily those with sufficient bargaining power to impose their terms who are able to turn an economic shock to their advantage.
And it is precisely here that the Senate report takes a much harsher line.
Following a six-month investigation into the profit margins of manufacturers and large retailers, the senators describe increasingly unbalanced commercial relationships, as well as a significant lack of transparency surrounding certain European purchasing groups. The report concludes that these mechanisms frequently benefit retailers at the expense of producers and suppliers. Some suppliers questioned by the committee even asked to be heard behind closed doors for fear of commercial reprisals.
The real beneficiary of the crisis is therefore not necessarily the one with the largest margin in an Excel spreadsheet. It is often the one who possesses something far more valuable: the power to set the rules.
The same phenomenon applies in the financial sector.
European banks have enjoyed several years that were particularly favourable to their profitability. As recently as May 2026, the European Central Bank noted that the return on equity for the eurozone banking sector in 2025 was close to 10 per cent. The situation is now more complex and their interest income has begun to decline, but the period of high interest rates has significantly transformed the banking sector.
In France, for example, Société Générale announced a record net profit of 6 billion euros for 2025 – up 43 per cent year-on-year – as well as a dividend payout of 4.7 billion euros to shareholders. This obviously does not mean that these 6 billion euros are ‘crisis profits’. It simply means that an economic crisis never has the same effects on everyone: what constitutes an additional burden for a borrower can become a source of income for their creditor.
This is probably where we find the best definition of the true ‘crisis profiteer’.
It is not the person who receives a few tens or a few hundred euros in aid to cushion a shock they did not choose. Nor is it automatically the company that raises its prices because its own costs are skyrocketing.
The crisis profiteer emerges when someone is able to keep for themselves a disproportionate share of the value created by an exceptional situation, without having created equivalent value in return.
They own the oil when oil becomes scarce. They control a bottleneck in a supply chain. They have bargaining power that their supplier lacks. They hold the asset that everyone suddenly needs. They can raise their prices faster than their costs rise. They can make others pay for a crisis whose consequences they themselves bear relatively little of.
This is why crises are such powerful economic indicators.
They do not merely create poverty. They brutally redistribute the balance of power.
When the consumer pays more but the producer does not earn more, we must look at what is happening in between.
When the price of a raw material soars by 30 per cent whilst the cost of extracting it has not risen by the same proportion, we must look to see where the difference is going.
When a company claims that ‘everything is going up’, the right question is not simply whether its prices have risen. We must examine its costs, margins, dividends and profits.
And when a crisis forces millions of people to count every euro whilst simultaneously delivering record results for certain players, the debate deserves better than the constant search for the petty fraudster or the convenient scapegoat.
The real profiteers of a crisis are not always those who take the most.
They are those who, when everyone is forced to pay, have the power to decide how much.
