FT : French state takes stake in Sanofi unit to smooth €15.5bn US deal

French state takes stake in Sanofi unit to smooth €15.5bn US deal
Deal for consumer health arm has faced a political backlash over ceding controlling stake to American private equity group

The government of France is taking a small stake in Sanofi’s consumer healthcare business as the French pharmaceutical group nears a politically sensitive deal to hand control of the unit to US private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice which values it at €15.5bn.

Economy minister Antoine Armand said on Sunday that state-investment bank Bpifrance would take a stake in the division known as Opella, following a backlash from across the political spectrum over the US approach and its possible implications, including for jobs in France.

Bpifrance’s holding will amount to 1 per cent, a person familiar with the talks said, enough to give it an Opella board seat. Le Figaro newspaper reported the stake sale earlier and said that C, D & R — which beat an offer led by French rival PAI in an earlier round of the sale process — would take 51 per cent in Opella, as the pair near exclusive talks over the deal.

“We’ve obtained guarantees that Opella will be developed and maintained in France. Our demands over jobs, production and investment will be respected,” Armand said on X late on Sunday. “The state, via Bpifrance, will be a shareholder to ensure this is the case.”

Sanofi and Bpifrance declined to comment.

Europe’s largest healthcare deal this year blew up into a test for France’s newly appointed government under Prime Minister Michel Barnier.

France has long been protective of its largest companies and often hostile to foreign takeovers, but in this case not only opposition parties hit out at the deal — so did some lawmakers from Emmanuel Macron’s own centrist party, at a time when the president is in an awkward power-sharing agreement with Barnier.

The Opella unit makes Doliprane, the brand under which Sanofi markets paracetamol in France, making it a household name and sparking concerns over potential shortages in future. During the Covid-19 pandemic in France the government rationed the painkiller.

Worries also flared over Opella’s 1,700 employees in France, while the deal raised uncomfortable questions over Macron’s years-long push to bring more pharmaceutical production back to France to create industrial jobs.

Last week PAI and its consortium sought to ride the backlash, trying to reopen bidding on the Opella deal with an offer €200mn higher than their original bid, people close to the talks said.

But the US offer is going ahead, people at France’s economy ministry acknowledged on Sunday after Armand’s comments aimed at making the transaction more palatable. Executives at Sanofi have also said a deal was close.

“The candidates for a stake in Opella have all had the same opportunity to submit their best offer, within the deadline of this process, which was identical for all,” Sanofi said in relation to PAI’s attempt at a second bid.

The rebuff marked the second time in weeks that a big European private equity firm tried to crank open a bidding process after the deadline, as buyout houses sit on record amounts of dry powder and fight over a pittance of major deals. 

In late September, German rail company Deutsche Bahn rejected new bids for its Schenker unit that Luxembourg-based CVC had submitted after the buyout house had lost out to Denmark’s DSV.

FT : AI search start-up Perplexity targets $8bn valuation in new funding round

AI search start-up Perplexity targets $8bn valuation in new funding round
Investor frenzy over artificial intelligence continues after OpenAI valued at $150bn in latest fundraising

Perplexity, an artificial intelligence-powered search engine aiming to take on Google, is in funding discussions for the fourth time this year, looking to raise up to $1bn at more than double its previous valuation as an investor frenzy for AI start-ups shows little sign of abating.

Weeks after OpenAI sealed one of the largest fundraisings in Silicon Valley history, Perplexity had been overwhelmed by unsolicited interest from new investors, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

It is now in talks to raise between $500mn and $1bn, which would value the company at $8bn, according to the people.

“The intensity and interest has accelerated” in the past month, said one person familiar with the discussions. OpenAI’s $6.6bn round, which valued the company at $150bn, has set a new ceiling for AI start-ups.

In recent weeks, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and “godmother” of AI Fei-Fei Li have separately raised $1bn each for months-old start-ups. OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati, who left the company this month, is also in early conversations with investors about raising funds for a new venture, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The flurry of fundraising has added to concerns about a bubble forming in the sector, with start-ups that are yet to be profitable burning through billions of dollars to train cutting-edge AI models. One venture capital investor said Perplexity’s mooted valuation was “heady” and had priced out his firm.

The fundraising was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. People familiar with the discussions emphasised that no lead investor had been chosen and nothing had been signed, although it was expected that existing investors would participate in the round.

Perplexity’s current backers include AI chipmaker Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as well as several prominent names from the AI industry, such as OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy and Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun.

It has been just a few months since Perplexity closed a $250mn fundraising round that included SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, said people familiar with the deal. That tripled its valuation to $3bn in the summer. The company had previously raised funds in January and April of this year.

The San Francisco-based group is seeking to redesign the search ads system pioneered by Google, where marketers bid to have a sponsored link placed against search queries and is in talks with major brands to pilot advertising on its platform.

Run by former Google intern Aravind Srinivas, the start-up's success will depend on its ability to grow users and navigate complaints from publishers that it is plagiarising their content without permission. The company said 250mn queries were made on its search engine in July, compared with 500mn in the whole of last year.

Perplexity currently makes money through subscriptions and says its annualised revenues — a projection of full-year revenues based on extrapolating the most recent month’s sales — have grown from $5mn in January to $35mn in August.

Perplexity declined to comment on the new fundraising.

FT : Masdar outlines plan to become one of world’s biggest renewable energy grou

Masdar outlines plan to become one of world’s biggest renewable energy groups
Abu Dhabi company to continue global investment spree that includes nearly €6.5bn of deals in Spain and Greece this year

Masdar, the Middle East’s biggest renewable energy company, has laid out how it plans to lift its wind and solar capacity to 100 gigawatts by the end of the decade — roughly equivalent to the total power generation of the UK.

The Abu Dhabi-based group would become one of the biggest renewable energy companies in the world if it achieves its target with more capacity than rivals Iberdrola of Spain, Engie of France or RWE of Germany.

The group, part owned by Adnoc, the state oil group, Taqa, the state water and power business, and sovereign investment fund Mubadala, plans to continue its global investment spree.

It has announced nearly €6.5bn of deals in Spain and Greece this year.

In the US, it has closed a deal for Terra-Gen, one of the country’s largest renewable players, while in the UK it has a 49 per cent stake in the £11bn Dogger Bank project, which will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm when construction is finished.

Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, chief executive, said the company will continue to invest significantly in the Middle East, Europe and the US, the world’s second-largest renewable energy market after China.

Al Ramahi said in an interview with the Financial Times: “By 2030, the Middle East will probably be 30 to 35 per cent of our power. Europe I would say 20 per cent. Also 20 to 25 per cent in the US, and then of course Asia. That is the distribution in terms of geography.”

He added the group was seeking an equal split between solar and wind power projects.

While renewable projects in Europe are priced at a premium, Al Rahami said Masdar will invest wherever energy markets are open and welcoming to direct foreign investments.

“When I look at my growth and my target, if I want to achieve 100GW, I cannot ignore Europe and I cannot ignore the US,” he said. 

Italian company Enel has a target for 154GW of renewable energy in the same timeframe as Masdar, but has recently begun an asset sales programme to reduce its debt.

With its acquisitions this year, Masdar has focused on acquiring not only assets, but experienced teams in the US and Spain, with the intention of building regional platforms. “More important than the size, is the team,” said Al Rahami, referring to the Terra-Gen deal.

He noted competition has increased in the renewables sector as private equity firms and other financial investors had entered in recent years. “I see it as very positive,” he said, adding it was not so long ago that banks would not finance renewable projects.

“But obviously it does increase the valuation of these assets. And that could be problematic in the sense that when private equity wants to exit, they sell to another party, and if that party loses money, then it goes into reverse, the market adjusts and the money starts going somewhere else.”

Renewable energy, he said, is ultimately a utility business which should make single-digit returns. “We are not financial investors [at Masdar]. Of course, we do put a lot of capital at work, but we are a strategic investor and our returns are always compressed because we are a utility. We are not going to recycle these projects after four or five years.”

FT : Lynton Crosby consultancy linked to alleged document forgery in Deripaska c

Lynton Crosby consultancy linked to alleged document forgery in Deripaska case
Revelations pile further pressure on business intelligence arm of CT Group which has sought to expand its business

The intelligence arm of Sir Lynton Crosby’s CT Group is to be named as the consultancy that provided an allegedly forged document used in a protracted legal battle involving sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

A spokesperson for CT Solutions & Private Advisory confirmed to the Financial Times that intelligence gathering in the case during which the document was obtained had been conducted by CTF Solutions, which later became CT Solutions & Private Advisory. The firm provides business intelligence to CT Group, which on its website touts its ability to provide “hard-to-access intelligence” to help clients resolve issues.

A London High Court judge last week ordered high-profile US litigation firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to reveal the identity of the business intelligence consultancy from which it had obtained the contested document. Quillon, the law firm representing Deripaska, said they expected to receive the disclosure as early as Monday.

The document was deployed as a core piece of evidence in legal proceedings brought by former Russian deputy finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin against his former business partner Deripaska, in which Chernukhin challenged the amount of compensation awarded to him as part of an arbitration agreement. 

The disclosure comes as CT Group — which was co-founded by former Tory election adviser Sir Lynton Crosby — was previously separately named in court as having provided allegedly forged documents in two other unrelated legal battles. In one of the cases the firm was also accused of unlawful information gathering.

The revelations will pile further pressure on the CT Group which has sought to expand its intelligence business, but also highlights the role of top London law firms which have used the allegedly forged materials as evidence in court proceedings.

The document at the centre of the most recent case is a Russian language report which included extensive information on property valuations. An arbitration tribunal in 2017 ordered Deripaska to pay Chernukhin $95mn to buy him out of a joint venture. However, Chernukhin’s side subsequently alleged that Deripaska’s side had suppressed the report, claiming that, if it had been put into evidence at the time of arbitration, Deripaska would have been ordered to pay Chernukhin $300mn more for his interest in the joint venture. 

CT in September 2019 sent a hard copy of the report to Quinn Emanuel, which advised the Chernukhin parties, while his solicitors — Clifford Chance — used it to challenge the arbitration award in the spring of 2020. The legal challenge was later withdrawn.

In last week’s order the judge said that the evidence pointed to the document being a forgery “designed to cause very considerable loss to the Deripaska Parties”. He added that there was a “good arguable case that a crime or criminal contempt has been committed in this case by reason of the forgery”. 

The judge found that Quinn Emanuel had “unwittingly facilitated” the wrongdoing in the case and the firm’s involvement in passing on the report for use in litigation “gave it the imprimatur of authenticity”. However, he stopped short of issuing the “serious finding” that Quinn Emanuel should have known that they were doing so.

Quinn Emanuel failed to make the “urgent inquiries” to satisfy themselves about the authenticity of the document which contained errors, such as an incorrect logo and dates as well as misspellings of the name of the purported author, according to the judgment.

The judge rejected Quinn Emanuel’s suggestion that the report had been “deliberately leaked” to the consultancy “in an attempt to sabotage” the Chernukhin parties. 

Deripaska sought to identify the business consultancy with a view to unmasking the ultimate source, according to last week’s judgment, which noted that there was “insufficient evidence” to infer that this would cause risk of harm to the consultancy or its sources. 

The Financial Times has previously reported that CT Group was accused of supplying forged banking transaction records in two unrelated legal battles. CT Group claimed the banking records had been gathered from a “specialised database that aggregates banking data for statistical purposes [and] law enforcement purposes for the European Central Bank.” The ECB has said no such database exists. 

In both these cases top city law firm Mishcon de Reya had hired CT Group and used the documents in court.

A spokesman for CT Solutions & Private Advisory said that through “hundreds of cases” the “quality, authenticity and procurement” of the intelligence that the firm had provided had never been questioned. 

He added that the firm “relied on sources and whistleblowers in good faith” and that the “companies and their personnel acted lawfully and appropriately and clearly instructed . . . and believed sources and whistleblowers to do likewise.”

The spokesman said that, in light of the court challenges, the firm had undertaken internal steps earlier this year “relevant to how law firms employ the litigation support that it provides”.

Quinn Emanuel declined to comment. Clifford Chance, which no longer represents Chernukhin, declined to comment.

FT : Europe markets watchdog bids to become EU’s version of SEC

Europe markets watchdog bids to become EU’s version of SEC
Verena Ross calls for more centralised powers in response to appetite for stronger capital markets and investment in bloc

The EU’s financial markets watchdog wants expanded powers to oversee major stock exchanges and other critical parts of the bloc’s financial infrastructure, as it bids to become a European version of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Verena Ross, chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority, said “there is clearly a political appetite” in the newly appointed European Commission to centralise more EU financial market supervision as part of a renewed push to revive the region’s struggling capital markets.

“Let’s evaluate in which areas it would make sense to move a step further to central EU supervision. We need to look particularly at all the cross-border systemically important infrastructure players,” Ross told the Financial Times, adding this would include exchanges, clearing houses and settlement systems. 

Esma was launched in 2011 to improve harmonisation of rules across the EU but most of its financial market activities continue to be supervised by the bloc’s 27 national authorities.

Paris-based Esma directly supervises relatively few entities, such as credit rating agencies, non-EU central counterparty clearing houses, securitisation repositories and benchmark administrators.

The idea of transferring more powers from national authorities to Esma has gained momentum in recent months as Brussels officials look for ways to boost capital markets activity to help finance an estimated €800bn of extra investment needs.

Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president, last month identified the transformation of Esma into a version of the SEC as “a key pillar” of boosting Europe’s capital markets in a landmark report on how to boost the EU economy.

Draghi said: “Esma should transition from a body that co-ordinates national regulators into the single common regulator for all EU security markets” by giving it power to supervise large multinational issuers, cross-border financial markets and all central counterparties.

Some smaller EU countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland have opposed the idea, fearing it could undermine their thriving financial sectors.

But Ross is convinced that the shift would improve the efficiency of Europe’s financial markets for both investors and issuers.

“Having an effective regulatory and supervisory framework has a big impact on making a single capital market work, and we don’t have that in Europe. So that is one of the areas that we need to focus on,” Ross said.

In a nod to the criticism from smaller countries, she said a “step-by-step” process of building up Esma’s powers was preferable to trying to turn it into an all-powerful European SEC overnight.

“It is more about thinking practically. We shouldn’t forget that the EU markets are quite different from the US markets in terms of the diversity of the legal systems,” she said. “Let’s make an EU central supervision role happen where it makes most sense at this point.”

The process could start by handing Esma more powers to supervise the “bigger, cross-border players” such as Euronext and Deutsche Börse that were “often servicing not just one country or a couple of them but genuinely serving investors across all the EU”, she said, adding that smaller markets and companies would continue to be supervised locally.

She suggested the EU missed an opportunity with its landmark crypto markets regulation, which comes into force at the end of the year but will leave oversight of companies in the hands of national authorities. “Would it have been more effective to have done it at an EU level? That was a debate we had at board level,” she said.

Draghi also called for Esma to strengthen its independence from national authorities that hold most of the voting positions on its board, by introducing independent members similar to those sitting on the ECB’s supervisory board, which oversees major Eurozone banks.

Ross rejected this, saying “the governance structure works pretty well at the moment”. It was important “to ensure that the national supervisors are fully part of that decision-making because a lot of the implementation is at national level,” she added.

FT : Investors turn to data centres to capitalise on AI boom

Investors turn to data centres to capitalise on AI boom
The assets offer consistent returns but come with risks including a high environmental impact

Spending time in a warm, noisy building full of servers, routers and storage devices might not be everyone’s idea of a fun day out — let alone appear to be a glamorous investment opportunity.

But these unassuming physical assets, known as data centres, are the beating heart of the internet, cloud services and emerging technologies such as AI. As internet usage and AI uptake increase, so will the need for powerful data centres. In fact, ABI Research predicts the number of global public data centres will reach almost 5,700 by the end of the year and could top 8,400 by 2030.

This makes them an attractive physical asset for wealthy individuals and investors looking to capitalise on technological trends and enjoy high returns. However, investing comes with considerable risks, including their substantial environmental impact, red-tape delays and high building and operational costs.

Still, data centres offer huge market potential. According to research company Statista, the industry is projected to be worth $416bn this year and to reach $624bn by 2029.

Vicente Vento, founder and chief executive of investment management business Digital Transformation Capital Partners, spun out of Deutsche Telekom in 2015, says cloud service expansion, increased digitisation, data consumption trends and the AI boom are the main drivers of an industry which forms “the backbone of digital services”.

David Bloom, founder and chief executive of IT-focused investment company Goldacre, agrees that data centres could deliver “significant” returns for investors because of the “continued demand” for cloud services and the “increasing deployment” of large data centres globally.

According to analysts Canalys, global cloud computing spending topped $78.2bn in the second quarter of 2024 — a growth of 19 per cent on the previous year. This translates into a pressing need for a greater number of data centres; a report from real estate services company JLL found that data-centre capacity in core European markets will increase by 16 per cent this year.

Bloom says: “We have seen evidence of this through large funds, such as Blackstone, deploying significant funds in this space and Google’s commitment to spend $1bn [in the UK] to harness the full potential of the surging demand for AI.”

Thanks to consistent and steady growth, the data-centre industry can offer investors long-term and stable returns on their investments, says Rajesh Sennik, a partner at KPMG. Data centre investments typically provide yields of 5-12 per cent, he says, and choosing those in the right location is essential as they “require substantial and reliable power supply”.

He urges investors to consider regions offering access to renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric, wind and solar power to reduce both costs and environmental impact.

For many investors, Sennik says, hyperscale data centres — larger, scalable facilities that cater to enterprises and organisations with extensive IT needs — will be the best investment option due to the “high-visibility, long-term contracted revenue” they offer. “They also enable the deployment of large amounts of capital into a market with lasting growth,” he says. “Investors can target up to 20 per cent returns on potential investments with the right opportunity.”

Despite the potential for significant yields, investing in data centres can be risky, Vento warns. He says the complex nature of data centres, particularly around their design and components, means that investors should ideally have some prior industry knowledge or a good understanding of these assets before investing in them.

When net zero goals are rising to the top of the corporate agenda, investors should take into account the negative effect data centres have on the environment. Research by climate-data company Climatiq from 2022 found that the share of global CO₂ emissions generated by data centres (2.5 per cent) was more significant than aviation (2.4 per cent).

James Igoe, head of the Manchester office at investment management firm Redmayne Bentley, expects this energy consumption to increase over the next few years based on existing projections.

After balancing the yields and risks, investors keen to press ahead with data centre investments can take several avenues. According to Igoe, one is approaching private infrastructure funds with expertise in this area, such as Blackstone and KKR. The caveat is that these funds typically expect a minimum investment of £10mn per deal, he says.

Another option for non-institutional investors is investing in data centres through a real estate investment trust (Reit) such as Equinix, which recently posted a 7 per cent increase in revenue for the second quarter of 2024 compared with the same period last year. Igoe says: “Reits focused on data centres have performed favourably over the last five years given the demand in the sector and the promise for future growth potential.”

Investors who are deterred by the risks of data-centre investments but still looking to capitalise on their market potential could instead invest in companies that manufacture critical components for these assets, such as processors, servers and cooling systems, says Jonathan Frick, partner at management consultancy Bain & Company.

AI systems, for which data centres are essential, may also pay dividends to tech-savvy investors. “Beyond infrastructure, the application layer of AI is growing even faster, creating opportunities in AI-driven software and services, which may offer higher returns, but also come with greater technological risk,” says Frick.

The Jerusalem Post : Hezbollah terrorists paid UNIFIL members to use their bases

Hezbollah terrorists paid UNIFIL members to use their bases - report

Hezbollah terrorists who were captured by the IDF in southern Lebanon testified in their investigations that Hezbollah paid money to UNIFIL personnel to use their bases for operations, Israel Hayom reported on Monday.

According to the report, Hezbollah also took over UNIFIL security cameras in the compounds near the Israeli border and used them.

Le Figaro : Comment l’État transforme les tarifs publics en impôt sur le revenu

Jean-Pierre Robin: «Comment l’État transforme les tarifs publics en impôt sur le revenu à taux progressif»

CHRONIQUE - L’avis d’imposition est devenu un document clé, un véritable sésame pour accéder aux services publics.

Prise d’assaut chaque jour par les automobilistes qui se rendent ensuite à Genève en tram ou en train, la commune frontalière d’Ambilly (Haute-Savoie, 6200 habitants) a décidé d’introduire «un tarif solidaire» (sic) pour le parking des véhicules. À compter du 1er octobre 2024, selon que vous serez aisé ou modeste, on vous taxera lourdement ou légèrement pour garer votre carrosse. Un résident d’Ambilly paie par exemple 242 euros l’abonnement annuel si son «revenu fiscal de référence» dépasse 27.469 euros l’an (pour une part) et seulement 88 euros pour un revenu inférieur à 21.120 euros.

À Paris également, le 1er octobre a marqué un tournant pour les quatre roues. Après la votation du printemps dernier, où 54,55 % des parisiens ayant participé au scrutin s’étaient déclarés favorables à une surtaxation des SUV (1,6 tonne), le prix de stationnement SUV visiteur a triplé. Il passe à 18 euros l’heure (mais 225 euros pour six heures) dans les arrondissements centraux (1 à 11) et 12 euros l’heure ailleurs. Au nom de l’écologie. Le tarif résidentiel est maintenu à 1,50 euro par jour, en ayant acquitté une «redevance de stationnement» de 45 euros l’an. Laquelle est toutefois gratuite pour les automobilistes non redevables de l’IR, l’avis d’imposition faisant foi.

L’indexation des services publics sur le revenu de leur utilisateur est une tendance mondiale et une tentation forte pour les États. Dans les pays «émergents», de la Russie au Pérou, du musée de l’Ermitage à la cité inca du Macchu Pichu, l’accès aux sites est tarifé différemment pour les autochtones et pour les touristes occidentaux. Rachida Dati, notre ministre de la Culture, songe à une tarification à deux vitesses faisant payer plus cher les visiteurs étrangers pour redorer les comptes du Musée du Louvre.

Autre prix susceptible de varier à la tête du client, les amendes qui payent elles aussi leur écot aux caisses de l’État. En France, les infractions à la Sécurité routière, réprimées grâce aux 4661 radars déployés le long des routes, ont rapporté 2,079 milliards d’euros en 2023, selon la Cour des comptes. Ce n’est pas (encore) le cas chez nous, mais dans plusieurs pays européens d’Europe centrale et du Nord, en Suède et en Norvège, en Slovaquie et en République tchèque, les amendes sont établies en fonction des ressources du conducteur fautif. Elles peuvent aller jusqu’à 125 % du revenu hebdomadaire en Grande-Bretagne, avec un plafond de 2500 livres (3000 euros).

Pour sa part, la Finlande ne connaît pas de limite, et en 2015 un homme d’affaires de 61 ans a dû débourser 54.024 euros pour avoir dépassé de 23 km/h les 80 km/h autorisés. La sanction, indexée sur ses revenus annuels de 6,55 millions, n’aurait été que de 345 euros si ses ressources personnelles avaient été de 50.000 euros, selon le simulateur de la police finlandaise. En l’occurrence, les autorités invoquent l’effet dissuasif que doit exercer la pénalité, ressentie différemment selon les ressources de chacun.

Ce même argument avait été soulevé lors des confinements instaurés en 2020 pour lutter contre la pandémie de Covid. La police avait alors distribué 2,2 millions de contraventions de 4e catégorie au tarif forfaitaire de 135 euros à l’encontre des récalcitrants. «Pour certains, c’est le prix du taxi quotidien, une bagatelle. Pour d’autres, pour la mère isolée, la femme de ménage, ce sont des semaines durant lesquelles les gamins mangeront des patates. Douce aux forts, dure aux faibles, la loi est injuste», dénonçait en avril 2020 une pétition lancée sur les réseaux sociaux pour réclamer une modulation des amendes selon les possibilités financières du contrevenant.

Le jeu de la redistribution

La référence aux «capacités contributives» en matière d’impôt et de tarifs publics n’est certes pas une idée neuve. Elle remonte à notre Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789 (article 13), qui a copié l’économiste écossais Adam Smith: «Les sujets d’un État doivent contribuer au soutien du gouvernement, chacun le plus possible en proportion de ses facultés», lit-on dans son livre de 1776 à l’origine de l’économie politique libérale, Recherche sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations.

Ces grands principes plaident-ils en faveur d’impôts proportionnels aux revenus ou au contraire à taux progressif, comme l’impôt sur le revenu? L’IR est sans conteste très progressif, qu’il s’agisse de son barème ou de sa concentration (55,3 % des foyers en sont exemptés et 10 % des ménages ont acquitté 73 % de sa collecte totale en 2023). Seuls les 35.000 foyers les plus riches voient leur taux régresser selon le Conseil des prélèvements obligatoires. De son côté la CSG, qui constitue un second impôt sur le revenu auquel nul n’échappe, est en principe proportionnelle. À l’exception cependant de certains chômeurs qui en sont exonérés et des quatre taux différents de CSG pour les retraités selon leur niveau de vie. À l’inverse, la TVA, exemple type de l’impôt proportionnel (sur les dépenses), est la même pour tous, d’où sa mauvaise réputation à gauche et au RN. Autre anomalie, les cotisations sociales sont progressives, en raison des allégement de charges sur les bas salaires jusqu’à 1,6 smic. Ce qui est à l’origine de la smicardisation actuellement décriée.

Au total «les prélèvements obligatoires contribuent à hauteur de 40 % à la redistribution des revenus en France, dont 31 % pour le seul impôt sur le revenu», calcule François Ecalle, qui dirige le site Fipeco consacré aux finances publiques. Les 60 % restants proviennent des prestations sociales sous conditions de ressources (minima sociaux, prime d’activité, prestations familiales, aides au logement). À quoi s’ajoutent tous les services publics locaux (crèches, cantines, actions culturelles…), dont le tarif croit avec le revenu. L’avis d’imposition est devenu un document clé, un véritable sésame pour accéder aux services publics. Et pas seulement dans la commune d’Ambilly, où le prix des parkings est fixé à taux progressif comme un impôt sur le revenu.