FT : Saudi Aramco chief warns of global oil shortage if industry fails to invest

Saudi Aramco chief warns of global oil shortage if industry fails to invest
Amin Nasser predicts ‘supply crunch’ unless energy companies return to exploration and find new reserves

The head of Saudi Aramco has warned of a global oil shortage on the horizon, after a decade in which the energy industry turned its back on the search for new oil.

Amin Nasser, chief executive of the world’s largest oil company by production, called for a return to spending on exploration and production as global demand for oil continued to grow, saying current investment was “extremely low”.

“We had a decade . . . where people didn’t explore. It’s going to have an impact,” Nasser told the Financial Times. “If it doesn’t happen, there will be a supply crunch.”

He also warned the US shale boom that had flooded the world with oil for a decade and a half was unlikely to be repeated.

“Eighty to 90 per cent of growth came from shale,” he said. “If you look at the next 15 years, shale is most likely to plateau and decline. Where are you going to bring the additional barrels to meet the demand?”

Oil majors have been cutting their spending on exploration and production since a price crash in 2014. They were also influenced by predictions of a rapid energy transition away from fossil fuels, and by investors calling for them to return more cash via dividends and buybacks.

Investment into oil and gas exploration and production is set to fall 6 per cent to $420bn this year, according to the International Energy Agency, the first year-on-year decline since a coronavirus-related slump in 2020.

Rather than spending heavily on complex and difficult projects, the industry has instead focused on drilling lower-cost reservoirs in a bid to meet demand.

However, many analysts now believe that oil consumption will be more robust than previously predicted, due to a slower switch to clean energy. Consultancy Rystad estimated that, as a result, there could be a global oil shortfall of close to 10mn barrels a day by 2040.

Nasser, who is nearing 10 years at the helm of Aramco, said that as it typically took five to seven years to bring new projects online, the world’s future supply rested on the actions companies took now.

“We monitor final investment decisions and you can see a big drop in decisions and projects that are coming into the market,” Nasser said, adding that Aramco was spending $1bn-$2bn annually on exploration.

“For us, it’s strategic. We’re exploring and adding significant amounts of reserves.”

For now, the market faces the opposite problem. Oil prices are forecast to fall below $60 a barrel next year, with analysts expecting a glut as Opec+ countries increase production as part of a battle for market share.

The industry has been cutting investment in anticipation of a prolonged downturn, potentially exacerbating the concerns raised by Nasser.

Nevertheless, his comments echo growing industry unease about reserves and long-term supply, with BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies all saying recently that they wanted to step up exploration and production.

The chief executive of Malaysian state oil company Petronas, Tengku Muhammad Taufik, told this week’s Energy Intelligence Forum that “more exploration” was needed, saying there was “a vacuum that needs to be filled”.

Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, told the London conference that only a quarter of the world’s annual oil consumption was being replaced through new discoveries.

“It’s not just investment that’s the problem, it’s finding the bigger reservoirs,” she said, adding that ExxonMobil’s giant discovery in Guyana would only meet a small slice of global oil demand.

“When you have the best discovery that has been made in the past couple of decades producing only enough to cover one-third of the demand in one year, that’s a big issue.”

FT : Big investors scale back risky bond exposure after storming rally

Big investors scale back risky bond exposure after storming rally
BlackRock and Fidelity International among asset managers betting credit rally has run out of road

Big investors are cutting back their exposure to riskier corporate debt, in a bet that a huge rally in recent years has left the market vulnerable to a sell-off if the global economy falters.

Asset managers including BlackRock, M&G and Fidelity International have shifted towards safer corporate or government bonds, in response to a big decline in US credit spreads that means investors get little reward for taking extra risks.

Some investors fret that the rally, driven by the easing of fears over a global trade war and expectations of deeper interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve, has left the credit market pricing in an overly optimistic scenario for global economic growth.

“Credit spreads are so tight that there’s almost no ability for them to tighten further,” said Fidelity International fund manager Mike Riddell, referring to the extra yield offered by corporate bonds relative to ultra-safe government debt.

He cautioned: “If anything goes wrong in the world, then spreads can widen substantially.” Fidelity International has a short position against developed market credit in its global flexible bond funds, meaning it will benefit if spreads widen.

Investment grade bonds in the US and Europe now offer around 0.8 percentage points of additional yield over government debt, down from more than 1.5 percentage points in 2022 and close to their lowest since the global financial crisis.


Simon Blundell, co-head of European active fixed income at BlackRock, said this “relentless tightening” had prompted the world’s biggest asset manager to shift towards higher-rated and shorter-dated debt. 

The market is “now priced for a Goldilocks scenario” of interest rate cuts and stable US growth, Blundell added, which is a “risk/reward [that] certainly lends itself to a defensive position in credit markets”.

In some cases credit spreads — a proxy for investors’ assessment of a borrower’s riskiness — have turned negative. 

Bulls argue that ultra-tight spreads are justified by company balance sheets that have been strengthened in recent years and a US economy underpinned by expectations of at least four further quarter-point interest rate cuts from the Fed by the end of next year.

However, spreads have widened slightly in recent days as renewed trade tensions between the US and China — and nerves over the collapse of automotive parts supplier First Brands Group — puncture investors’ bullishness.


Paul Niven, manager of the £6.4bn F & C Investment Trust, said it had cut back its position in credit to “neutral” in recent weeks, selling high-yield bonds because the “asymmetry in terms of cost compared to government bonds is getting expensive”.

There have been signs of investor pushback in some riskier areas of the wider corporate debt market. A number of leveraged loans, including a $5.8bn issuance from speciality chemicals producer Nouryon and another deal worth over $1bn from drugmaker Mallinckrodt have been shelved in recent weeks. Meanwhile, some outstanding loans have fallen in price as investors have instead opted for safer debt.

There have “been quite a few blow-ups in the last week or two and it’s shaking confidence”, said one trader of high-yield debt.

Some hedge funds are avoiding the debt of weaker companies, responding to what they see as indiscriminate tightening of spreads this year.

“Not only is the corporate credit market way too tight, it’s also equivalently tight between companies,” said Andrea Seminara, founder and chief investment officer of London-based credit hedge fund Redhedge. “There is lots of idiosyncratic risk which is completely unpriced [by the market].”

The overall yield on corporate bonds received by investors, known as the “all-in yield”, is still seen as attractive by many, due to rises in government bond yields in recent years. The yield to maturity on US investment grade bonds is around 4.8 per cent, according to an Ice index.

“Corporate bond yields are attractive and deserve to be owned now,” said Ben Lord, a fund manager at M&G Investments. But he added the firm was moving into higher-rated corporate credit and areas such as covered bonds issued by life insurers.

“The cost of switching out of BBB-rated unsecured bonds and buying these is as low as it’s ever been,” he said.

FT : Europe must rethink military procurement says drone maker’s new boss

Europe must rethink military procurement says drone maker’s new boss
Uwe Horstmann becomes first chief executive of Stark, a German start-up backed by investors including Peter Thiel

Europe must rethink military procurement to keep up with the fast-changing world of drone warfare, the new boss of German start-up Stark has said.

Uwe Horstmann, who will on Thursday be announced as the 15-month-old attack drone maker’s first chief executive, welcomed calls from top western military officials to update long-standing purchasing models to reflect the pace of innovation in the sector since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

“When and how do we want [these drones]? How many of them? What do we do with them? Do we store them? Do we update them?” he asked in an interview with the Financial Times. That debate, Horstmann added, was “one of the keys to creating actual deterrence through industrial structure”.

Berlin-based Stark did not previously have a chief executive. In an unusual arrangement, he will remain a partner at the venture capital firm Project A, an early Stark backer, “scouting investments, contributing investment decisions or portfolio management”.

Horstmann’s appointment comes after German defence minister Boris Pistorius said on Wednesday that the country planned to invest €10bn in military drones in the coming years to help protect Nato airspace against threats from Russia.

In response to the cat-and-mouse game of innovation and counter-innovation playing out between Ukraine and Russia, Germany’s top general Carsten Breuer said last month that he could imagine new types of contracts that enabled the military to swiftly order large numbers of the latest drones.

That might be preferable to stockpiling weapons that could quickly become outdated, Breuer said.

Horstmann welcomed such discussions, but pointed to some of the challenges in a highly regulated domain that requires the certification of each new product or update: “Ideally, the software is something that we want to update every week,” he said.

Stark — whose backers include Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor, Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of data analytics group Palantir and head of venture capital firm 8VC, and leading Silicon Valley VC group Sequoia Capital — is one of the fastest growing drone start-ups in a rapidly proliferating sector.

The company was valued at $500mn in its last funding round, which raised $62mn, in August. 

Germany’s armed forces bought a small number of Stark’s autonomous, armed Virtus drones this year, as well as some from rival Helsing, for testing purposes. Those companies are vying for an upcoming much larger contract. 

Horstmann said secrecy rules meant he could not disclose any government deals: “I can tell you that we have multiple contracts, not just one.”

Stark, which has also been developing a command-and-control system called Minerva, has a team in Ukraine.

The start-up, which in July announced plans to open a UK factory in Swindon, has also faced controversy.  

Stark was co-founded by former army officer Florian Seibel after investors in his reconnaissance drone start-up Quantum Systems told him that they could not allow it to make armed unmanned aerial vehicles.

It has since faced questions about whether it has maintained a firewall between the two entities. Horstmann said Seibel was a “good friend” with whom he worked well but “doesn’t have an operational role”.

Stark and Quantum, he said, were “entirely separate” with “entirely different teams”.

FT : Airlines face disruption as US shutdown continues

Airlines face disruption as US shutdown continues
Delays and cancellations hit travellers in third week of federal government funding freeze

Airlines are facing cancellations and disruption as the US government shutdown enters its third full week.

The freeze on federal government funding, which began on October 1, means air traffic controllers are working without pay as “essential workers”.

Many are staying at home, placing strains on an already-stretched system. Last week, US transportation secretary Sean Duffy claimed about 10 per cent of ATC employees were calling in sick, or simply not turning up to work.

“Some airports are seeing significant delays,” Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said on Tuesday.

The German carrier, which partners with United in the US, is being hit by disruption to feeder flights from US-based carriers rather than its own aircraft that fly to Europe, Spohr said.

Lufthansa is also being affected by slower certification of new aircraft, with the shutdown preventing inspections needed to sign off new seats in its Boeing 787 model, he added.

Staff-related delays have hit airports including Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee, while worker levels at other sites are down as much as 50 per cent, leading flights to be held up or rerouted.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has urged its members to turn up to work despite the shutdown. “We cannot stress enough that it is essential to avoid any actions that could reflect poorly on you, our union, or our professions,” it said in a message to members.


“Any time there is a government shutdown, the impact on aviation is really core,” said Billy Nolen, the former head of the Federal Aviation Authority, the government-funded agency that regulates air travel.

Last week, Delta Air Lines — the first of the big three American carriers to report its annual earnings — said it expected the situation to deteriorate the longer the shutdown lasts, even though the early impact on its business was negligible.

“If this extends beyond next week, pay closer attention, but for now we’re in pretty good shape,” Delta chief executive Ed Bastian told the Financial Times.

The shutdown has strained a sector that was struggling with a shortage of air traffic controllers that has disrupted flights across the US and been tied to fatal accidents.

The staff shortfall has been blamed on funding cuts and failure to attract enough people to the industry. About $30bn is needed for a fundamental overhaul of the air traffic control system, allowing it to update technology and other equipment, according to Nolan.

“The agency can only do what they have allocated funds to do by Congress,” he added.

Airlines have long been calling for the modernisation of the system. “The modernisation of ATC has been talked about for a long, long time in the US and not seemingly prioritised,” said John Mowry, head of Alton Aviation Consultancy.

In 2018, a 35-day federal shutdown grounded flights, causing widespread disruption across the network and costing airlines tens of millions of dollars.


Savanthi Syth, global airlines analyst at Raymond James, said in the current shutdown “one silver lining [for airlines] is that this is off-peak season so the volumes being handled are lower than in the summer or during holidays”.

But Benjamin Smith, CEO of Air France-KLM, said the sector is feeling the pinch. “Every government sector that touches our industry, of course, is at risk,” he said.

While there is no federal budget, the functions the airlines rely on will “slow down or cost more”, he said. “Nothing is protected.”

Lawyers who focus on air safety have warned a prolonged shutdown increases the chances of accidents.

“What happens when controllers aren’t showing up to work in a system that is already operating at the bare minimum, then you find yourself in a very dangerous situation,” said Ricardo Martinez-Cid, partner at Podhurst Orseck, the law firm that has worked on several cases stemming from the Boeing 737 Max incidents.

But former FAA head Nolan — now a senior director at start-up Archer Aviation — stressed “the system will always be safe”.

“It’s a complex network, and they [the FAA and airlines] will be working together to keep the system going,” he said. “If we need to slow the system down to maintain the level of safety, we will do that.”

>>> US After Hours Summary: HPE -9.4% on strategic overview and guidance; JBHT +

After Hours Summary: HPE -9.4% on strategic overview and guidance; JBHT +11.2% higher on earnings; UAL -2.2% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: JBHT +11.2%, BANR +3.8%, EPAC +3.6%, PNFP +3.2%, SNV +1.4%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: NVA +2.6% (5-for-1 forward ADS split), SEI +1.6% (names new co-CEO), AIR +1.3% (to become authorized service center for ETN aerospace customers across EMEA), RUM +1% (RUM and Perplexity introduce subscription bundle), WHF +0.9% (declares a special distribution of $0.035/sh), AGNC +0.2% (AGNC and ICE launch three indices), SAND +0.2% (Sup Ct of British Columbia grants final order for SAND RGLD merger), MMSI +0.1% (to acquire C2 CryoBalloon), DD +0.1% (Board approves previously announced separation of Qnity Electronics), ATGE +0.1% (to partner with Google to launch new AI credentials program)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: MMLP -8.7%, REXR -2.8%, UAL -2.2%, FR -1.2%, TFIN -0.5% (also authorizes new $30 mln share repurchase program), SLG -0.4% (also acquires properties), HOMB -0.1%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: HYPR -20.5% (stock offering, provides guidance), SATL -12.8% (stock offering), HPE -9.4% (provides strategic overview; to merge segments; to increase dividend 10% in FY26, increases buyback auth by $3 bln, long yrtm guidance), DFLI -8.1% (stock offering; also stockholders approve incentive plan increase), BDX -5.8% (CFO to step down, provides guidance), TGB -4.5% ($150 mln bought deal financing), BITF -4% ($300 mln convertible notes offering), ZION -2.9% (to charge off $50 mln of loans following review), RGLD -1.8% (Sup Ct of British Columbia grants final order for SAND RGLD merger), CRSP -1.1% (files for $600 mln common share offering), GHI -0.6% (files for $200 mln mixed securities shelf offering), ICE -0.5% (AGNC and ICE launch three indices), RIG -0.5% (provides fleet update), CBSH -0.1% (FineMark shareholders approve merger), MMS -0.1% ($31 mln contract win)

NY Post : Jeff Bezos’ Amazon stake dips below 10% as sell-off streak continues

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon stake dips below 10% as sell-off streak continues

Jeff Bezos’ ownership stake in Amazon has fallen below 10% — marking a milestone in the billionaire’s decades-long relationship with the e-commerce giant he built from a Seattle garage.

The Amazon founder disclosed in a Tuesday securities filing that he now holds roughly 9% of the company’s outstanding shares after unloading more than 100 million shares over the past year.

A year ago, Bezos controlled about 10.1% of the company, according to regulatory records. When Amazon went public in 1997, he owned more than 43%.

Bezos’ latest divestments are part of a broader stock-selling spree that began after he stepped down as CEO in 2021 and handed day-to-day operations to successor Andy Jassy.

At that time, he still held about 14% of the company, filings show.

In February, Bezos filed to sell 25 million shares — a move that would net roughly $5 billion based on Amazon’s stock price at the time.

A subsequent filing in August revealed plans for another 25 million-share sale worth an estimated $5.4 billion.

He also donated more than 500,000 Amazon shares to charity in recent months, according to SEC disclosures.

Amazon’s stock has soared 38% since late April, giving Bezos an ideal window to cash out portions of his holdings.

The boom came as investors bet heavily on the company’s artificial intelligence push and cost-cutting drive under Jassy.

Even factoring in the sell-offs, Bezos remains one of the world’s richest individuals, with Bloomberg placing his net worth at about $240 billion. That trails the fortunes of only Tesla CEO Elon Musk and French luxury titan Bernard Arnault.

Bezos’ exit from Amazon’s corner office has freed him to focus on other ventures, including The Washington Post, which he bought in 2013, and his aerospace company, Blue Origin.

Both have undergone management shakeups in recent months as he looks to reboot performance.

At a New York Times conference last year, Bezos said “turning around The Washington Post” was among his top priorities.

“I have a bunch of ideas, and I am working on that right now,” he said.

“We saved The Washington Post once — this will be the second time.”

Under Bezos, the Washington Post has undergone a sweeping overhaul this year, merging key newsroom divisions, cutting about 4% of its staff and shifting to a digital-first approach amid falling subscriptions.

Bezos also refocused the opinion section around themes of free markets, patriotism and personal liberty — prompting both leadership shakeups and subscription cancellations.

The 60-year-old mogul — who married former TV anchor Lauren Sánchez in a star-studded Venice wedding in June attended by Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio — has become a regular presence in Los Angeles social and business circles.

Bezos has regularly used stock sales to fund his space ambitions for Blue Origin and for other private projects. He previously said he intends to give away most of his wealth during his lifetime.

His ex-wife, philan MacKenzie Scott, has also been trimming her Amazon stake.

A Tuesday regulatory filing viewed by Bloomberg showed that Scott cut her holdings by about 42% — roughly $12.6 billion — over the past year.

Scott, who walked away with 4% of Amazon in their 2019 divorce, now owns about 81 million shares. The 55-year-old has donated more than $19 billion to charitable causes since the split.

Bezos’ gradual pullback from Amazon contrasts sharply with his early years, when his stake represented nearly half of the company. He serves as executive chairman and retains significant influence even as his ownership stake approaches single digits.

When Amazon went public at $18 per share in 1997, it raised about $54 million and instantly made Bezos a multimillionaire.

His holdings soared in value through the dot-com boom and subsequent waves of expansion that transformed the online bookseller into a trillion-dollar global powerhouse.

After 27 years at the helm, Bezos stepped aside as CEO in July 2021 and handed control to Jassy — a longtime lieutenant who led Amazon Web Services.

Since taking over, Jassy has made his own mark by expanding the company’s sports-rights portfolio, including a blockbuster Thursday Night Football deal and a new pact with the NBA expected to begin later this month.

Bezos’ share sales this year have been executed through prearranged 10b5-1 trading plans, a mechanism designed to prevent insider trading by scheduling transactions in advance.

Neither Bezos nor Amazon immediately responded to Post requests for comment Wednesday.

WSJ : SL Green Is Buying NYC’s Park Avenue Tower in One of the Year’s Biggest De

SL Green Is Buying NYC’s Park Avenue Tower in One of the Year’s Biggest Deals

SL Green Realty has agreed to pay $730 million for a Midtown Manhattan office tower near Park Avenue, raising its bet that New York City will continue to strengthen as the nation’s top-performing office market.

The city’s largest office landlord plans to announce the transaction on Wednesday when it is expected also to post strong third-quarter earnings, according to people familiar with the matter.

SL Green’s deal to buy the 36-story building, called Park Avenue Tower, is one of the largest office building sales of the year and shows that sales momentum for desirable office buildings in prime locations is heating up. The 620,000-square-foot building on 55th Street is more than 95% leased.

Over the summer, New York property owner RXR completed an even larger deal. The firm and its partners purchased 590 Madison Avenue, the former IBM building, for $1.1 billion. That was the first New York office sale to exceed $1 billion in nearly three years, a milestone set regularly during boom years in the office market during the previous decade.

Property values plunged after the shift to remote work reduced demand for office space in most cities. The sharp rise in interest rates further eroded office building values along with the broader commercial real-estate sector.

But with the Federal Reserve starting to cut interest rates, the property market is showing signs of life. That is especially true in New York where the supply and demand trends are looking good for landlords. During the first six months of this year, investors purchased $3.5 billion of Manhattan office buildings, compared with $2.3 billion in the same time period in 2024.

Another reason the sales market is rebounding: New York office building prices have fallen 45% since their pre-pandemic peaks, according to an MSCI index.

“That’s discount enough to get some buyers and sellers back together,” said Jim Costello, MSCI executive director of research.

Office building prices have stabilized and leasing is ramping up. But sale prices are still well below peak levels. Blackstone purchased Park Avenue Tower in 2014, when prices were near the highwater mark, for $750 million, or about $20 million more than SL Green is paying.

Le Figaro : pourquoi la taxe sur les holdings est un retour «déguisé» de l’ISF p

Budget 2026 : pourquoi la taxe sur les holdings est un retour «déguisé» de l’ISF pour les concernés

DÉCRYPTAGE - Dans le même esprit que celui de la taxe Zucman, la mesure proposée dans le budget par le gouvernement entend viser les plus fortunés via le patrimoine des sociétés qu’ils détiennent.

Beaucoup d’experts l’affirment : « Un holding, en droit français, ça n’existe pas. » Effectivement, le nouveau dispositif mis en avant par le gouvernement dans son budget déposé ce mardi vise un type d’entreprise qui n’a pas de définition formelle : les holdings familiaux. Concrètement, l’article 3 du projet de loi de finances (PLF) - qui court sur cinq pages tant le dispositif est complexe - prévoit de créer une taxe de 2 % sur « les actifs non professionnels détenus par les sociétés ayant leur siège en France ». Pour être redevables de cette taxe, les entreprises doivent être valorisées à plus de 5 millions d’euros, une personne ou une famille doivent en détenir 33 %, et leurs revenus doivent majoritairement être des revenus financiers (dividendes, plus-values…).

Selon le PLF 2026, ce nouvel impôt vise à « assurer une juste contribution des personnes les plus fortunées qui recourent à ce type de montage » pour « échapper à l’impôt ». En effet, les propriétaires de holdings peuvent parfois y conserver les revenus financiers que génère le patrimoine de l’entreprise. Ce faisant, ils ne se distribuent pas de dividendes et échappent de facto à l’imposition des revenus financiers (le prélèvement forfaitaire unique, notamment). Ainsi le dispositif imaginé par Bercy vise à imposer ce patrimoine « thésaurisé » dans les « holdings ».

«Une taxe confiscatoire»

Pour ce faire, il considère l’ensemble du patrimoine des sociétés concernées, en excluant de l’assiette de calcul « les titres de participation dans les sociétés dont le holding détient 5 % ou plus », explique Yoan Chemama, avocat associé au cabinet Arsene. En cela, il se rapproche de l’ISF (impôt de solidarité sur la fortune), disparu en 2018 et remplacé par l’IFI (impôt sur la fortune immobilière). Et il taxe non pas des revenus mais un patrimoine en ciblant les plus aisés. 

« Les ménages propriétaires des entreprises qui seront redevables de la taxe constituent une population qui aurait probablement été soumise à l’ISF à l’époque », confirme l’avocat. Toutefois, la cible affichée du nouvel impôt est beaucoup plus réduite que celle de son ancêtre. L’article 3 du PLF cite explicitement les « environ 4000 ménages les plus fortunés ». L’exécutif espère que cette nouvelle taxe rapportera environ 1 milliard d’euros dès l’an prochain à l’État. Si seulement 4000 ménages s’en acquittent, leur facture risque d’être salée (250 000 euros en moyenne).

Contrairement à l’ancien ISF, le dispositif sur les holdings n’est pas plafonné. Ainsi, « en l’absence de plafonnement en fonction du résultat de l’année correspondant au rendement du patrimoine du holding, celui-ci pourrait être contraint d’en vendre une partie pour s’acquitter de la taxe », souligne Me Chemama. Ainsi, « c’est une taxe confiscatoire car non plafonnée et non déductible de l’assiette de l’Impôt sur les sociétés » ce qui peut créer une double imposition, tranche Vincent Lazimi, avocat associé au cabinet Jeantet.

L’assiette de la « taxe holding » se rapproche aussi beaucoup de celle de l’ISF, qui taxait le patrimoine financier des individus en excluant « l’outil de travail », c’est-à-dire les actifs se rapportant aux sociétés au sein desquelles les contribuables concernés exerçaient des fonctions de direction. La nouvelle taxe, qui, pour sa part, s’applique aux sociétés, vise aussi le patrimoine financier et en exclut de fait « les actifs qui se rapportent aux entreprises dans lesquelles le holding exerce une certaine influence », décrypte l’avocat du cabinet Arsene. L’expert du cabinet Jeantet qualifie d’ailleurs le dispositif d’« ISF déguisé » et souligne que son taux est plus sévère que celui de l’ancien impôt sur les fortunes (celui-ci atteignait 1,5 % maximum).

Un outil qui inquiète

En plus de l’imposition des holdings français, le texte prévoit que « la taxe sera également due par les résidents français qui détiennent des holdings situés à l’étranger ». Sur ce point, la logique du dispositif est quelque peu fragile, dans la mesure où « pour les holdings étrangers, elle conduit à taxer des particuliers (contribuables français, NDLR) au titre d’un impôt conçu pour les sociétés », remarque Vincent Lazimi qui estime qu’un tel procédé est « discriminatoire » par rapport aux holdings français.

Pire encore, comme le seuil de participation pour être redevable est de 33 % et non pas 50 %, l’administration fiscale pourrait se retrouver à imposer un résident français sur des dividendes non distribués par une société étrangère, alors même que celui-ci n’a pas le pouvoir de décider d’une distribution. « Dans ce cas, un particulier français devra-t-il vendre sa maison pour payer la taxe sur les holdings ? », s’interroge un expert.

Une chose est sûre : ce nouvel outil inquiète. « Depuis la publication du budget, je suis sollicité en permanence par des clients anxieux de savoir comment la taxe va impacter leur holding », confie un fiscaliste. Pour l’instant, cette source tente de « garder la tête froide ». « Pour l’heure, cette taxe n’est qu’un projet qui va sans doute évoluer », tempère Antoine Vergnat, avocat associé au cabinet McDermott Will & Schulte.

Voici ce que payent déjà les Français les plus aisés : http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/alors-que-l-isf-revient-sur-la-table-voici-ce-que-payent-deja-les-francais-les-plus-aises-20250926