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"Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto," a look at the woman behind Chanel, opens this week at the V&A museum in London.

LONDON — In a grand cross-channel gesture that would have put a smile on Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s sun-kissed face, Chanel and the Victoria & Albert Museum have put on a show that explores the designer’s life, style and abiding love for Grande Bretagne.

“Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto” is the first U.K. exhibition dedicated entirely to the French fashion designer. It charts six decades of her career, starting with the opening of her first millinery boutique in Paris in 1910, and ending with her final show in 1971.

On Tuesday night, the V&A welcomed VIP guests for a preview, with the exhibition opening to the public this Saturday and running until Feb. 25 at the museum’s Sainsbury Gallery.

“The V&A is probably one of the best institutions in the world and the exhibition offers a good direction. It’s easy to follow, and you don’t need to be an expert in Chanel to understand what’s happening,” said Bruno Pavlovksy, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS.

He added that Chanel would “benefit from the wider audience that the V&A attracts.”

Chanel has been digging deep into the U.K., transferring its global headquarters to London, and planning to show its next Métiers d’Art collection in Manchester on Dec. 7.

“The U.K., especially London, has always been a good partner to us as we continue to write the story of the brand,” he said in an interview ahead of the opening.

Pavlovksy declined to reveal any details about the Manchester show for now, but described the decision to show in the northern city as “audacious, interesting” and in keeping with creative director Virginie Viard’s creativity, and the house’s globetrotting strategy.

“We were in Los Angeles, we were in Dhaka [Bangladesh], and this year we are in the U.K. We continue to engage our customers everywhere, and that’s the most important thing to me. A few weeks after the October show in Paris, we are going to Shenzhen for something very big. We try to be everywhere, but it always comes with a big focus on the local customers,” he said.

This year, the U.K. customer is front and center. “The fashion business in the U.K. after the pandemic has been performing quite strongly. We have seen a lot of locals back in the boutiques,” Pavlovksy said.

Chanel has also been investing heavily in the market. It is building an office, set to open in 2025, at 38 Berkeley Square to house its global headquarters, which it relocated to London from New York in 2018.

Designed by architects Piercy and Co. and to be constructed “to the highest standards of sustainability and accessibility,” the new building is more than double the size of the current Chanel headquarters in the Time & Life Building at 1 Bruton Street.

The Bruton Street headquarter is right next to the brand’s London flagship at 159 New Bond Street, for which it reportedly paid 310 million pounds in 2022.

During the interview, Pavlovsky also defended the brand’s decision to increase the price of its popular handbag styles multiple times since COVID-19 struck.

Most recently, the brand increased the prices of its Classic Flap bags by 6 percent to 8 percent in Australia, Japan and China on Sept 1. The bag is now being sold at $10,200.

“From a pricing position, we are at the top of the market for good reason, because of the material, and the sophistication. We have been very challenged over the past three years to be able to guarantee and supply the best materials.

“We also want to protect our customers. We don’t want to have the English or French prices being more or less expensive than in Japan or China. Our first and main target is our local customers. We don’t want people making money by buying in one country and selling in another,” Pavlovksy said.

Those looking to tap into Chanel’s style, however, don’t have to pay such a hefty price. The exhibition at the V&A is free.

The V&A show is based upon an exhibition of the same name, which took place at the Palais Galliera in Paris in 2020, although it’s different in several aspects, according to curator Oriole Cullen, head of modern textiles and fashion at the museum.

The show space is bigger and comes with a more elaborate set design, which took eight weeks to assemble. There is also an additional part that looks at Chanel’s personal and business connections to the U.K.; a section that showcases her luxurious cocktail suits, and a bigger space for the wide range of the brand’s custom jewelry.

Some 100 new items have been added to the show, such as a painting of Chanel by Winston Churchill and a red evening gown made for Chanel by the Manchester Velvet Company. In total, the exhibition features more than 200 looks sourced from V&A’s own collection in addition to those from the Palais Galliera and the Patrimoine de Chanel, the heritage collections of the fashion house in Paris.

Chanel had strong links with Britain through her relationships with Arthur “Boy” Capel and subsequently Hugh Grosvenor, the second Duke of Westminster. The show also reveals that the designer had been sourcing cloth from Britain since the early 1920s, and by 1927 had set up a salon in London, offering garments tailored to a British audience.

In 1932, Chanel established British Chanel Ltd to work directly with U.K. textile manufacturers. She worked with Broadhead and Graves of Huddersfield to produce jerseys, wools and silks; Ellaness, the production division of the Lyle and Scott, on knitwear, and David Moseley on rainwear.

“We also added a section on stage and screen, because we have original costumes from ‘Le Train Bleu,'” Cullen said. The one-act ballet made its U.K. debut at the Coliseum Theatre London in 1924 and starred Lydia Sokolova, Anton Dolin, Bronislava Nijinska and Leon Woizikowsky.

Cullen said the V&A show also targets a much boarder audience than the original version.

“The Palais Galliera is a fashion museum in Paris. Their audience is very clued up about fashion. The V&A has quite a general audience, and people will go to all different types of shows. A lot of the feedback we had early on was who is Gabrielle Chanel? Is she related to Coco?” Cullen said.

“When you come into the show, there is a big timeline. Although this show is not biographical, it tells you who Gabrielle Chanel is, and puts her within her own timeline. We also try to create a sense of movement through the space. Because it’s a big exhibition, there’s a lot to see. And it’s important there is a bit of a rhythm. A lot of consideration went into [offering] the visitor a different experience,” she added.

The showstopper is the suit room, where 54 Chanel tweed suits are on display on a curved wall with two levels.

“It runs from a very muted neutral palette all the way through to incredibly bright colors, and it really reflects fashion in the ’60s and what Chanel was doing at the time,” Cullen noted.

Another V&A show highlight is the recreation of the mirror stairs in Chanel’s apartment at the Ritz in Paris at the end of the exhibition.

That part of the show focuses on Chanel’s eveningwear offering toward the end of her career, and there is one dress from the last collection she designed in 1971. The collection was presented two weeks after she died at the age of 87.

The exhibition doesn’t shy away from Chanel’s connection to the Nazis, and the role she played during World War II. It provides context and evidence from this period and acknowledges that Chanel’s activity during the war cast a shadow over her legacy. It has been the subject of a number of articles and publications for the past 70 years.

An underlying theme that Cullen hopes the professional audience will notice is how Chanel created the formula for the brand early on, and kept revisiting and reinventing key elements in order to keep up with the times. Those elements and house codes remain the backbone of the Chanel brand’s success.

In 2022, the company reported revenues gained 17 percent to $17.22 billion while operating profits rose 5.8 percent to $5.78 billion. Chanel ended the year with 32,116 employees and 565 boutiques worldwide, of which 262 were dedicated to fashion.

“The name Chanel is so known globally. It’s such a strong brand, but we would just like people to know a bit more about who was behind that name, and why her name is still relevant today,” Cullen said.

“What’s fascinating to see is that she’s the person who comes up with all of these codes and subsequently, there have been fantastic people like Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard who would take that forward.

“If you look at the suits from her later career, you can see they are based on the tweed suits from the early times. There is this idea of being able to move in your clothing, and the fact that the jackets are cut very high in the arms,” Cullen said.

She added that the shoe prototype in the exhibition is “very recognizably ‘Chanel’ throughout the decades. The heel might get thicker, and the toe might get rounder, but it’s always visibly a Chanel shoe.”

Cullen was also the curator of the 2019 “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” exhibition, one of the most successful in the museum’s history. She anticipates that the Chanel exhibition will also be a great hit.

“They’re the two great names in French fashion, and it’s so lovely to have a comparison. But they are different types of shows. We’ve had a really nice response so far. We’ve sold the most pre-sales tickets that the museum has ever sold in history,” Cullen said.

CEO Oliver Reichert said “Birkenstock is more than a shoe. lt’s a way of thinking, a way of living.”

Birkenstock has made its move.

The L Catterton-backed sandal-maker filed for an initial public offering — a move that telegraphs the strength of the company and the market.

The registration statement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, confirms a July 6 report in WWD that the company was preparing to make its Wall Street introduction.

Other companies weighing IPOs are watching Birkenstock closely and a strong offering, the early buzz is the valuation could top $8 billion, could help reignite the market.

In a letter included with the registration statement, chief executive officer Oliver Reichert told prospective shareholders that, “Birkenstock is more than a shoe. lt’s a way of thinking, a way of living.”

Recounting his first impressions when he joined the company in 2009, Reichert said: “Birkenstock was a sleeping giant — a brand that had endured for centuries since 1774 and was widely revered, resonating with and even shaping the zeitgeist for decades to this day, stubborn in a positive sense, undeterred by fashion trends and proudly German. Birkenstock had all the essential elements of a super brand — a rich heritage at its core built around our purpose to empower all people to walk as intended by nature; an unyielding approach to craftsmanship combined with an obsession for quality; a vast product archive with an impressive variety of iconic silhouettes; a steadily growing global following sharing similar values and beliefs, and a uniquely democratic approach to innovation, pricing and distribution.”

The filing puts the spotlight clearly on Birkenstock and, for the first time, reveals the brand’s finances.

For the year ended Sept. 30, the company posted 187 million euros in net earnings and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of 434.6 million euros. Sales tallied 1.2 billion euros.

In the first half of this year, adjusted EBITDA tallied 224.4 million euros on sales of 644.2 million euros.

As is typically the case for the first filing on the road to an IPO, many of the key details were left blank, including just how many shares will be sold and at what price.

L Catterton, which bills itself as the largest consumer-focused private equity company in the world, bought a majority stake in Birkenstock in 2021. Although the valuation was never revealed, it was said at the time to be around 4 billion euros.

Birkenstock was an unusual catch for L Catterton — a brand with a long heritage that is immediately recognizable, of scale and very profitable.

The filing, which is more than 100 pages, offered a window into just how the business works.

Birkenstock is especially known for its footbed, which hasn’t changed in more than 120 years. Every footbed the brand sells is made in the company’s own facilities in Germany, which also assembles 95 percent of its products.

The brand has more than 700 silhouettes, with the core looks being the Madrid, Arizona, Boston, Gizeh and Mayari.

Birkenstock has been prioritizing two key markets — the Americas, which made up 54 percent of the brand’s revenues last year, and Europe, which accounted for 36 percent of revenues.

“We optimize growth and profitability through a multichannel DTC and B2B distribution strategy that we refer to as engineered distribution,” the company said in its fling. “We operate our channels synergistically, seeking to grow both simultaneously. We utilize the B2B channel to facilitate brand accessibility while steering consumers to our DTC channel, which offers our complete product range and access to our most desired and unique silhouettes. Across both channels, we execute a strategic allocation and product segmentation process, often down to the single door level, to ensure we sell the right product in the right channel at the right price point.”

Direct-to-consumer revenues have grown at a compounded growth rate of 42 percent between 2018 and 2022, when the channel made up 38 percent of revenues.

Inflation, bond issuance and Fed tightening are spurring a Treasury derivative bonanza

The basis trade, an innocuous-looking practice at the center of some of Wall Street’s historic blowups, is back.

A popular way for hedge funds to profit from bond trading while minimizing their exposure to swings in the market, the basis trade exploits the price difference between Treasurys and Treasury futures. The resurgence is attracting fresh scrutiny from Wall Street because previous meltdowns have rattled global markets.

Here’s what traders say is going on now:

How the basis trade works

Hedge funds buy Treasurys, then bet against Treasury futures by selling contracts promising delivery of a bond on a specific date at a preset price. Instead of betting on the direction of bond markets, the trade seeks to take advantage of small differences in the securities’ prices.

The trade works because large asset managers like pension funds often prefer buying Treasury futures that require less up-front cash than actual bonds. That tends to make the contracts slightly more expensive than the bonds, creating a window for speculators to take advantage. Futures prices typically converge toward bond prices as their settlement date approaches.

The differences are small, so hedge funds juice returns by borrowing from big banks in the overnight funding markets—often putting little, if any, cash up front. Leverage can reach extreme levels: Hedge funds had more than $550 billion of Treasury trades at the end of last year backed by just $10 billion of their own money, Fed research found.

That worries some on Wall Street. Unexpected shocks can force hedge funds to rapidly exit from their positions, sending shock waves through financial markets.

What’s happening now

The basis trade had been subdued since a dash for cash in March 2020 forced hedge funds to rapidly unwind their positions, straining the market for Treasurys—meant to be the world’s easiest investment to buy and sell.

Now, a flurry of activity suggests it has rebounded. Speculators are shorting 5.6 million futures contracts tied to Treasurys, CFTC data show, representing roughly $715 billion of bonds.

At the same time, repurchase agreements, where speculators borrow daily from large banks using Treasurys as collateral, have surged. Roughly $1.4 trillion of overnight repo transactions are taking place each day, New York Fed data show, breaching previous highs.

What sparked the surge in Treasury trading

The Fed’s fight against inflation and the U.S. government’s wave of borrowing reignited the trade, analysts say. Higher yields and worries about a recession have asset managers scooping up long-term bond futures.

Investment in Treasury futures has never been higher at CME Group, one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges. A record 19.8 million contracts were outstanding in August, up from 14.3 million at the start of the year.

At the same time, the continuing influx of debt issuance has weighed on short-term Treasury prices, widening the gap between them and long-term futures. Inflation remains far from the Fed’s 2% target and the central bank is paring its bond book, adding pressure to the market.

Given those uncertainties and with a potential recession up in the air, “it’s natural to see record hedging in the Treasury market,” said Agha Mirza, global head of rates and OTC products at CME Group.

Watchdogs’ warnings

Regulators and others have sounded alarms this year that an unwinding of the basis trade could spark market tumult.

The Switzerland-based Financial Stability Board warned last week that hedge funds were building up worrying amounts of “hidden leverage,” risking a blowup. During the 2020 Covid market crash, hedge funds’ unwinding of leveraged strategies including the basis trade spilled across markets, helping send the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst losses since 1987 and forcing the Fed to step in.

The Securities and Exchange Commission wants to require trading firms such as hedge funds involved in the Treasury market to register with the agency. Chair Gary Gensler said it would help “level the playing field.” Both bodies warn that banks require nearly no margin, or cash buffers against losses, for fund managers to access significant leverage.

The trade doesn’t always go as planned. A scramble for cash could hurt short-term Treasury prices, or a flood into long-term bonds could boost futures prices. Hedge funds forced to exit their positions by market swings could spur banks to ask for more collateral to back up their positions, worsening the volatility.

In extreme circumstances, the combination can throw a wrench into the ordinary process of convergence.

The hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management famously collapsed 25 years ago—requiring a Fed bailout—after pursuing similar strategies that bet on securities prices converging.

Worries overblown?

Many investors say concerns about the basis trade are overblown. Without it, greater friction in the underpinnings of the financial system would cause more onerous terms for taxpayers, they say.

DRW Holdings is one of the firms actively trading the basis. The Chicago-based proprietary trading giant opposes the SEC’s proposal to register participants as so-called dealers, saying it would do more harm than good by hurting competition and liquidity.

“The basis trade is crucial to the Treasury market,” said Mark Wendland, chief operating officer. “It drives liquidity, ultimately lowering the U.S. government’s borrowing costs.”

The leverage involved is at the heart of firms’ willingness to participate. Even a small increase in financing costs would slash the trade’s profitability significantly, Fed research found.

CME Group’s Mirza said the basis trade remains just a fraction of the record 5.2 million Treasury contracts changing hands on an average day this year. Still, it serves a vital function.

“The basis trade benefits price discovery and liquidity in the Treasury market, and therefore the economy and taxpayers,” he said.

Internal investigation from 2019 uncovered rule-breaking and lax controls in sales of complex products to Spanish SMEs

Deutsche Bank continued to sell risky foreign exchange derivatives to companies in Spain that had suffered big losses from such products even after an internal inquiry found long-standing mis-selling.

An internal probe that began in 2019 after a whistleblower complaint found that staff exploited flaws in the bank’s controls and broke EU rules, pushing small and medium-sized Spanish companies to buy highly complex products that were promoted as safe and cheap hedges against foreign exchange risks.

The products generated huge profits for Deutsche but exposed clients to extensive risk and losses in some cases.

Deutsche has disciplined about a dozen staff in response and also paid tens of millions of euros in settlements to larger clients that bought the derivatives from its investment bank.

But according to people close to the businesses involved and documents reviewed by the Financial Times, smaller companies that bought the products from Deutsche’s international private bank are still being asked to pay up on large losses caused by derivatives that were mis-sold starting more than five years ago.

“No foreign exchange market professional would ever buy this kind of instrument,” said Prosper Lamothe, a finance professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, who has investigated some of the cases. He added, that Deutsche had been “exploiting” the ignorance of its customers.

In one case that was reviewed in detail by the Financial Times, a family-owned fruit and vegetable wholesaler with €3mn in annual sales was sold derivatives over the past five years covering €19mn of foreign exchange exposure.

The Canary Islands business, which has just four employees, sells pumpkins, carrots, oranges and other produce to clients in Switzerland. It wanted to hedge its Swiss Franc exposure and, according to the owner, was offered products that Deutsche said would be low cost and low risk. He said he only realised what he had been sold in early 2023 and that the product had caused the business €1.5mn of trading losses.

“Deutsche Bank has long brushed aside pleas to settle those cases, arguing that the contracts signed by the affected clients are legally binding,” said Julio Ribelles, a Valencia-based lawyer who represents some of the affected companies.

People familiar with Deutsche Bank’s internal discussions said the bank had stopped selling the products to new clients after the probe found mis-selling. They added that until this summer, the bank did continue to offer new derivatives to existing clients in an attempt to offset previous losses. Ribelles said this created a risk of losses “snowballing over time”.

According to these people, Deutsche stopped offering derivatives to these existing clients only after the Financial Times made an inquiry in August. They also pointed to a recent rule change by the Spanish regulator CNMV that has made it harder and more expensive to sell complex derivatives to SMEs. They added that the bank was now trying to settle the remaining cases. “We are in talks with a small number of clients regarding outstanding transactions,” said one of the people, acknowledging some of the cases were “not easy to solve”.

Other people with knowledge of the bank’s policy told the FT that some senior managers were unimpressed with how the bank had treated affected clients, blaming the lender’s international private bank for the slow response and saying that the investment bank had been quicker off the mark.

These people also said that the cost to Deutsche of waiving client losses was large and that it had been trying to spread the impact on profits over a longer time, hoping losses would become smaller and easier to settle if the Euro strengthened with rising interest rates.

Until earlier this year, Deutsche’s international private bank was run by former Credit Suisse banker Claudio de Sanctis, who was then promoted to the management board and is now in charge of the bank’s retail operations.

Chief executive Christian Sewing has been promising to put past misconduct problems, which include the manipulation of benchmark interest rates and the mis-selling of mortgage-backed securities, to rest. He has said he wants to reposition the bank as the “global Hausbank” of corporate clients and has promised “to support our clients in a spirit of partnership and remain part of the solution”.

“Deutsche Bank’s treatment of SME clients in Spain has long been completely at odds with this promise by Sewing,” said Ribelles. Sewing and De Sanctis declined to comment.

Some of the affected companies have been pushed to the brink of insolvency, people familiar with the cases told the FT.

A Madrid-based importer of sporting goods made in Asia told the FT that it had to fire a quarter of its 40-strong workforce after its auditor earlier this year uncovered €1.5mn in trading losses on Deutsche derivatives that it needed to provision for.

The company imports sporting goods worth $7mn a year but was sold derivatives covering an import volume of €35mn by Deutsche Bank, according to documents seen by the FT. The company only sells products in Spain, but Deutsche also sold it €27mn in derivates to hedge exports.

Lamothe estimated that Deutsche earned more than €2mn in fees from derivative trades with that client. “We’re facing an existential crisis,” a senior manager of the business told the FT.

Lamothe told the FT that he was personally aware of “at least 15 such cases”, adding that there could be hundreds of other companies that were still unaware, because trading losses might not have come to light yet.

Alfonso Ramos, a Madrid-based lawyer representing the fruit and vegetable wholesaler, estimated that on the Canary Islands alone there were up to 50 companies in a similar situation. “But only very few have the power and determination to take legal steps,” he added. Spain is one of the biggest markets for Deutsche Bank’s international private bank, which has more than 650,000 clients and 2,300 employees in the country.

One of the lawyers for the Spanish companies said that changes to derivatives contracts made by Deutsche last year mean it is now harder to sue the bank. The bank added new clauses stipulating conflicts must be resolved in private arbitration tribunals rather than public courts. While private-sector tribunals can work faster than courts, they act without public scrutiny and can be expensive.

According to Ribelles, a company with an average loss of €1mn could expect to pay about €70,000 in arbitration costs plus legal fees, and could have to cover the bank’s costs if it lost. He added that it was impossible to appeal tribunal decisions and that Deutsche Bank had failed to make the implications of the new rules clear to clients. “Deutsche Bank effectively sneaked in new rules that are severely limiting the SME’s legal rights”, he said.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the specific cases but said the facts as described by the FT were “largely taken out of context”. It added that it had “taken appropriate action including improving our processes and enhancing our controls” after reviewing “parts of our sales activities in structured FX derivatives”. The bank added that implementing changes that came out of the mis-selling probe was “an ongoing process”.

People familiar with the bank’s view pointed out that the type of derivatives sold “are widely used by many organisations and sold by many banks”. They added that some of the clients made financial gains from the products in the past, and disputed the claim that the clients were unaware of the risks or treated unfairly by Deutsche.

These people also denied that the bank changed the contracts to make it harder for clients to sue, but acknowledged that “there was an exercise last year to update all [Master Agreements for Financial Transactions],” and that this had followed recommendations from the Spanish Banking Association. They also said the bank’s preferred option of arbitration over open court was “not uncommon or unreasonable for derivatives disputes”.

DÉCRYPTAGE - La traditionnelle locomotive de l’Europe est en panne. Avec une coalition ingouvernable, Berlin paie entre autres les errements de sa politique énergétique et sa dépendance au secteur automobile.

Si le football était le baromètre de la santé d’un pays, l’Allemagne serait bien fragile. Après avoir brutalement congédié son sélectionneur, Hansi Flick, la Mannschaft s’est imposée sans gloire mardi soir contre l’équipe de France, et sans dissiper ses faiblesses. Signe de fébrilité tout à fait inédit, la Fédération, qui agit d’ordinaire avec pondération, avait limogé son principal technicien quelques heures seulement après une défaite humiliante contre le Japon (4-1). L’équipe qui hier inspirait la crainte et le respect sur les pelouses est aujourd’hui en plein doute.

Quant au pays lui-même, est-il redevenu «l’homme malade de l’Europe?», s’interrogeait l’hebdomadaire britannique The Economist au cœur de l’été, suscitant une nouvelle vague douloureuse d’introspection dans une nation d’ordinaire confiante et conquérante. Avec une récession qui se confirme en 2023 - de 0,4% selon l’institut IFO -, l’Allemagne est responsable du ralentissement de la zone euro, a pointé lundi la Commission européenne. Humiliation supplémentaire, l’Espagne, les États-Unis et surtout l’éternel adversaire français, dessinent pendant ce temps, leur conjoncture en rose.

«Warum wir nicht?» «Pourquoi pas nous?», s’angoissait fin août Der Spiegel, l’hebdomadaire de référence qui, d’ordinaire, s’abandonne volontiers au «french bashing». «La France est une Allemagne meilleure », ajoutait l’un de ses éditorialistes, Michael Sauga, louant les réformes d’Emmanuel Macron. La réponse à cette interrogation angoissée avait déjà surgi durant la pandémie, qui a grippé les approvisionnements extérieurs de l’industrie allemande et révélé sa dépendance excessive aux exportations vers la Chine. Les exportations n’ont progressé que faiblement au premier semestre 2023 (+ 2,9%) par rapport à la même période de l’année dernière, tandis que les importations reculaient de près de 5%.

L’impératif d’une transition écologique

La guerre en Ukraine a parachevé cette tendance. Elle a remis en cause un modèle industriel basé sur des livraisons de gaz à bas coût, gagées sur une politique d’accommodement funeste à l’égard du Kremlin. Les artisans de cette politique, de Gerhard Schröder à Angela Merkel, sont désormais relégués aux oubliettes de l’histoire. Au premier chef la chancelière, qui voit sa légendaire pondération associée à un péché d’immobilisme. Elle est accusée de ne pas avoir réformé un pays qui, durant une décennie, s’est endormi sur ses lauriers.

Bien que privée de gaz russe, l’Allemagne vient de renoncer au nucléaire sous la pression des Verts. Cette décision qui, il y a moins de deux ans, faisait l’objet d’un consensus, suscite aujourd’hui les critiques régulières des alliés du FDP et d’une frange croissante de l’opinion publique.

L’irruption de la guerre a conduit deux logiques à s’affronter: l’impératif politique d’une transition écologique, affirmé lors de l’accord de coalition de 2021 d’une part, et la crainte d’autre part de voir des piliers énergivores de l’industrie allemande, comme le chimiste BASF, flancher sous le fardeau des coûts. La nécessité de sauver les seconds risque de se faire au détriment de la vague verte. «L’heure n’est plus à subventionner ce qui appartient à l’histoire mais de faire en sorte que la transformation (écologique, NDLR) s’opère plus rapidement et qui plus est chez nous, en Allemagne», met en garde, Henry Knobbe-Eschen, président du comité d’entreprise du fabricant d’éoliennes Enercon (33.000 salariés).

L’impératif de la transition expose à nu l’état de délabrement des infrastructures, pourtant nécessaire à son accomplissement: des autoroutes dégradées en chantier permanent, que le FDP entend développer au nom de l’automobile reine émettrice de CO2. Et des chemins de fer asphyxiés faute d’investissements et de réformes. Deux heures suffisent pour rejoindre Paris et Bordeaux tandis qu’il en faut quatre avec un ICE, le TGV allemand, pour relier dans la même distance Cologne et Munich, critique le journaliste Thomas Wüpper, dans un livre consacré au «chaos de la Deutsche Bahn». Une entreprise laissée en jachère «par avarice et désintérêt». Cet ouvrage a été écrit… il y a cinq ans.

«Personne ne veut prendre de risques»

Pour sa part, le réseau numérique reste antédiluvien et la bureaucratie étouffante. «Dans les administrations, chacun cherche à se protéger en se réfugiant derrière l’argument du droit, censé assouvir le besoin absolu d’égalité, et ceci jusque dans les moindres virgules. Personne ne veut prendre de risques. Nous avons perdu la capacité à prendre des risques et à gérer l’imprévisible», se désole Frank Baasner, directeur de l’Institut franco-allemand de Ludwigsburg, pour qui la France dispose de dix ans d’avance dans l’administration numérique.

l’exposé de ces carences, le gouvernement a d’abord répliqué d’une manière réflexe, à l’unisson. «La dynamique de croissance n’est pas à la hauteur de nos ambitions mais l’Allemagne est un pays très fort, que ce soit sur le plan de la performance par habitant, le nombre de brevets déposés, la richesse de nos spécialistes, l’interdépendance internationale, les capacités…», énumère le ministre des Finances, Christian Lindner. Loin de rassurer la population, ces propos soulignent un décalage croissant entre la parole politique et la perception des électeurs, s’inquiète l’hebdomadaire Die Zeit.

Une part croissante de la population exprime sa méfiance à l’égard de l’État et des institutions publiques: de 27% à 42% entre 2017 et 2023 selon une enquête trisannuelle réalisée par l’Institut franco-allemand auprès des plus de 30 ans, même si le degré de satisfaction reste plus élevé que dans l’Hexagone. «Nous avons affaire à une crise qui touche tous les secteurs de la société, mais cette inquiétude s’exprime d’autant plus vivement que l’Allemagne dispose d’un niveau de prospérité plus élevé et qu’elle a donc plus à perdre», analyse le sociologue Dominik Enste, professeur à l’université technique de Cologne.

Montée de l’AfD

Les conflits qui agitent l’actuelle coalition cristallisent ce mécontentement. Les Verts et les libéraux s’y font la guerre sous l’œil détaché d’Olaf Scholz. «Cette alliance de progrès dont il ne reste pas grand-chose repose sur un chancelier et son parti social-démocrate qui n’ont jamais dans l’histoire bénéficié d’un taux d’approbation aussi faible (20%)», observe Manfred Güllner, directeur de l’institut de sondage Forsa. Tous les partis traditionnels, y compris la CDU, qui ont toujours garanti la stabilité politique de l’Allemagne, sont essorés. Seule l’AfD profite de la crise, ajoute le politologue, accomplissant ce qu’aucun parti d’extrême droite n’avait réussi à faire depuis 1945: élargir et consolider un électorat au-delà de sa clientèle radicale.

Sa percée sème la panique dans la classe politique. L’Alternative pour l’Allemagne surfe sur les peurs liées à l’immigration au moment où le pays fait face à une deuxième vague de réfugiés, aussi forte qu’en 2015. La première avait été bien gérée par Angela Merkel. La seconde tétanise le gouvernement fédéral qui, lesté du poids de l’histoire, peine à prendre à bras-le-corps ce défi politique. Réduisant ce dernier à un problème capacitaire, il laisse les régions se débattre financièrement pour gérer l’accueil des migrants.

Ce faisant, l’État creuse le fossé politique avec les Länder, déjà apparu lors de la crise sanitaire. Jouant leur propre carte politique, les présidents des seize régions du pays viennent de se réunir à Bruxelles pour exiger un programme de subvention de la facture électrique des grandes industries, auquel Berlin reste hostile. Or, nombre de réformes sont suspendues aux accords avec le Bundesrat, la Chambre haute qui réunit les Länder.

Un «pacte national»?

Olaf Scholz, qui jusqu’à présent minimisait les difficultés et appelait ses concitoyens à la patience, est brusquement apparu au Bundestag la semaine dernière, l’air impatient, proposant la création d’un «pacte national» réunissant les principaux acteurs du monde politique et économique. Une initiative susceptible «de remettre l’Allemagne sur les rails», et semblable aux tentatives de son homologue français, Emmanuel Macron. «Les citoyens en ont assez de cette stagnation, et moi aussi», a dit le chancelier en réclamant un effort collectif. Émanant d’un homme qui a rarement fait preuve de leadership, cet aveu n’a rien de rassurant. Et la promesse d’un pacte a suscité peu d’enthousiasme.

Plus que d’attendre un «choc venu du haut», l’Allemagne doit s’appuyer sur ses capacités locales à «agir et à innover», qui font la force du pays, soulignent les sociologues. À abandonner ses postures moralisatrices, quitte à surprendre là où on ne l’attend pas forcément. «Peut-être faudrait-il laisser de côté le fait de se considérer comme des champions du monde», avance Dominik Enste pour qui son pays est doté, parmi les nations industrialisées de l’OCDE, d’une plus grande «résilience». Bien que laborieuse lors de son match de football contre la France, mardi, l’Allemagne a été sacrée championne du monde de basket trois jours plus tôt. Une spécialité dans laquelle elle s’était auparavant très peu illustrée…

Bruxelles lance l’assiette fiscale unique dans la perspective de l’impôt minimum mondial

Bruxelles se prépare à la taxation minimale internationale, cet ambitieux projet porté par l’OCDE auquel ont souscrit les Vingt-Sept dans la douleur et qui entrera en vigueur en 2024 dans 140 pays au total. Le commissaire à l’Économie et à la Fiscalité, Paolo Gentiloni, a présenté mardi depuis Strasbourg le cadre de taxation des revenus, ou «Befit». Une proposition de corpus unique de règles fiscales pour les entreprises en Europe qu’avait appelé de ses vœux il y a un an la présidente de la Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, dans son discours sur l’état de l’Union.

La réforme internationale prévoit une imposition minimale mondiale de 15%. Évidemment, le calcul de la base taxable des entreprises est primordial et il convient aux groupes concernés de veiller à une certaine harmonisation. Bruxelles veut aller plus loin et propose de mettre en place, à partir de 2028, un ensemble unique de règles pour le calcul de l’assiette fiscale quel que soit le pays où exercent les entités d’un même groupe et quelle que soit la nationalité de leur maison mère.

Ainsi, précise la Commission, «toutes les sociétés membres d’un même groupe calculeront leur assiette fiscale conformément à un ensemble commun d’ajustements fiscaux dans leurs États financiers». Toutes ces assiettes fiscales seront ensuite agrégées en une seule. Et le pourcentage imposable qui s’appliquera à chacune des entités sera calculé de manière transitoire - durant sept ans - sur «la base de la moyenne des résultats imposables des trois exercices fiscaux précédents». Selon les critères négociés par les pays membres de l’OCDE, sont concernées toutes les sociétés réalisant plus de 750 millions d’euros de chiffre d’affaires.

«Garantir la sécurité fiscale»

Sous certaines conditions, les groupes ayant leur siège dans des pays tiers devraient aussi se conformer aux nouvelles règles européennes. Les PME qui opèrent dans différents pays de l’UE pourront recourir à ces règles, de manière facultative.

En réalité, le projet de la Commission est moins ambitieux que celui qui était souhaité par «VDL». L’objectif était alors de réaffecter les bénéfices dans les États membres où l’entreprise crée de la valeur. Une proposition balayée par les pays où la fiscalité est faible, Irlande en tête. «Les taux d’imposition resteront déterminés au niveau national», a souligné mardi le commissaire italien, prenant les devants vis-à-vis des dirigeants de l’UE qui veillent jalousement sur leur politique fiscale, un des domaines les plus sensibles de l’UE où l’unanimité est requise. Pour autant, la Commission n’a pas renoncé à avancer sur la question de la répartition des bénéfices…

Paolo Gentiloni a pointé mardi les avantages de ce nouvel ensemble de règles pour le calcul de l’assiette fiscale. «Le Befit réduira les coûts de conformité fiscale, mais est également conçu pour garantir la sécurité fiscale», a-t-il indiqué. Sa mise en œuvre permettrait ainsi de réduire les coûts actuels de conformité fiscale des entreprises jusqu’à 65%. Avant de se prononcer, Paris attend les résultats de l’étude d’impact promise par la Commission.

Même si Paolo Gentiloni a préféré ne pas s’appesantir sur le sujet, le Befit devrait aussi limiter les risques de fraude. À la clé, «un allégement des pertes transfrontalières, dans la mesure où les pertes seront automatiquement compensées avec les bénéfices transfrontaliers, ainsi qu’une sécurité fiscale accrue en matière de respect des prix de transfert». Dans ses propositions présentées mardi, Bruxelles s’attaque d’ailleurs aussi au prix de transfert, ce mécanisme qui permet de déterminer le prix des transactions entre sociétés faisant partie d’un même groupe. Là aussi, l’objectif est de remettre de l’ordre entre les différentes règles à l’œuvre dans les États membres et ainsi de limiter les pratiques d’optimisation fiscale dont abusent certaines entreprises.

Un plan pour réduire les délais de paiement à 30 jours des PME

La Commission a dégainé mardi une série de mesures en faveur des PME qui constituent une partie essentielle du tissu économique de l’UE. «Elles représentent 99% des entreprises et les deux tiers des emplois», a rappelé le commissaire Thierry Breton. Parmi les propositions phares de Bruxelles, la réduction des délais de paiement alors qu’un quart des faillites de PME - forcément plus fragiles - est lié à des retards.

Le délai serait ramené à 30 jours, 60 jours maximum sous certaines conditions. En cas de retard, le paiement des intérêts sera automatique. Les PME ayant des établissements dans plusieurs États membres pourront n’en référer qu’à une seule administration fiscale - celle du pays où est installé leur siège - au lieu de se conformer à plusieurs régimes fiscaux. Il est également question d’alléger la charge administrative de ces entreprises. Un sujet sur lequel veillera l’envoyé européen pour les PME, une nouvelle fonction créée à la Commission. Les exigences en matière de déclaration vont être réduites via un «système technique unique» qui permettra à ces entreprises «d’effectuer des procédures administratives dans l’ensemble du marché unique sans avoir à soumettre à nouveau des documents».