93In order to examine whether or not the Member State or the public body concerned has adopted the conduct of a prudent private operator operating in a market economy, it is necessary to place oneself in the context of the period during which the measures at issue were taken in order to assess the economic rationality of the conduct of the Member State or of the public body, and thus to refrain from any assessment based on a later situation. The comparison between the conduct of public and private operators must thus be made in relation to the attitude which, at the time of the operation in question, a private operator would have had in similar circumstances having regard to the available information and foreseeable developments at the time (see, to that effect, judgment in Stardust, cited in paragraph 33 above, EU:C:2002:294, paragraphs 71 and 72). Consequently, the retrospective finding of the actual profitability of the operation performed by the Member State or the public body concerned is irrelevant.
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