FT :Jumble of tax proposals snarls up France’s painful budget process

Jumble of tax proposals snarls up France’s painful budget process

Counting every cent
French budget talks have been bogged down by a volley of contradictory amendments aimed at raising taxes on the rich, heightening the risk of the bill running aground as the country’s parliament runs out of time, writes Sarah White.

Context: Talks in France’s lower house as part of a new budget for next year have become increasingly messy, complicating Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s attempts to forge an agreement in a fragmented parliament to trim the country’s deficit.

Yesterday, lawmakers were racing their way through hundreds of proposed fiscal amendments before they pivot to tackle the welfare budget for 2026 and eventually move on to spending cuts.

But even on the tax segment alone, Lecornu’s plea to opposition parties to work together appears to be falling flat, as lawmakers from across the political spectrum have added amendments with little cohesion.

A new 2 per cent tax on holding companies proposed by Lecornu to appease the left was watered down; a property tax created by President Emmanuel Macron when he abolished a wealth tax in 2017 was amended to include yachts but no longer applies to main residences; and a form of exit tax on fiscal exiles that Macron had abolished was restored.

Over the weekend, economy minister Roland Lescure warned of “fiscal sorcery”, suggesting that some of the measures may not be constitutional — even as some opposition parties already claim victory over various taxes.

The chaos means that getting the budget through the Assemblée Nationale and the senate before Christmas, on what was already a narrow timetable, is looking increasingly out of reach. 

If the deadline lapses without a deal — or if the budget is rejected by warring lawmakers — France may be back where it started early in the autumn when Lecornu became the country’s third prime minister in a year: in crisis mode.

The prime minister has the option of ultimately passing his original proposed €30bn package of spending cuts and tax rises via decrees. But that “nuclear” option, parliamentarian specialists say, would incense the parties he has fought hard to win over, including the Socialists who have tacitly supported Lecornu until now.

Socialist party leader Olivier Faure said last night his party was willing to give Lecornu more time. He told BFMTV he saw a “narrow path” to agreeing a budget before the year-end. 

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>>> Nanobiotix UBSGlobal Conf. 10/11, Guggenheims Conf 10/11 Stifel Conf NY13/11

Nanobiotix, société française de biotechnologie en phase de développement clinique avancé, pionnière des approches fondées sur les nanoparticules pour élargir les possibilités de traitement des patients atteints de cancer ou d'autres maladies, annonce aujourd'hui qu'elle participera à des discussions ("fireside chat") aux conférences suivantes :

UBS Global Healthcare Conference
Date : lundi 10 novembre 2025
Horaire : 23 h 00 CET / 17 h 00 ET
Lieu : Palm Beach Gardens, FL (États-Unis)
Participant : Bart van Rhijn, directeur financier et du business développement de Nanobiotix

Guggenheim's Annual Healthcare Innovation Conference
Date : lundi 10 novembre 2025
Horaire : 22 h 30 CET / 16 h 30 ET
Lieu : Boston, MA (États-Unis)
Participant : Laurent Levy, cofondateur de Nanobiotix et président du directoire

Stifel Healthcare Conference
Date : jeudi 13 novembre 2025
Horaire : 14 h 00 CET / 8 h 00 ET
Lieu : New York, NY (États-Unis)
Participants : Laurent Levy, cofondateur de Nanobiotix et président du directoire & Bart van Rhijn, directeur financier et du business développement de Nanobiotix

Les présentations enregistrées seront retransmises en direct sur la page évènements de la section Investisseurs du site Internet de la société. La rediffusion sera disponible après l'événement...

FT : America votes: five states to watch in the off-year elections

America votes: five states to watch in the off-year elections
Hundreds of polls will take place one year into Donald Trump’s second term

Voters will head to the polls across the US on Tuesday for state and local elections that will take the political temperature nearly one year into Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

Hundreds of local government positions ranging from school board governors and city council officials to judges, mayors and governors will be voted on in dozens of states across America.

But races in the following five states will have national significance, providing the clearest signal yet of how Republicans and Democrats are faring in the eyes of the electorate one year out from next year’s midterm elections, when control of both chambers of Congress will be up for grabs.

New York
While mayoral races will take place in a number of states on Tuesday, the most closely watched contest will be held in New York City, where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani appears on course to complete his remarkable rise from political newcomer to leader of America’s biggest city.

Mamdani, 34, shocked the political establishment in June, when he defeated former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo and incumbent New York City mayor Eric Adams, among others, in a crowded field of hopefuls in a Democratic primary contest.


Cuomo decided to run in November’s general election as an independent, but several recent polls have shown Mamdani with a double-digit lead over the former governor. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, has long trailed in the polls in a distant third place.

Mamdani is nevertheless divisive, and his policy platform, focused on affordability, with a sweeping expansion of public services paid for by tax rises for the wealthy and corporations, and pointed criticism of Israel, has exposed deep fissures in the Democratic party.

He has also been attacked by Republicans, including Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funding for New York City if voters there elect Mamdani.



Virginia
The Virginia governor’s race takes place every four years and is among the most anticipated off-year elections in the US. Taking place one year after a presidential election, it has long been seen as a key electoral bellwether.

Four years ago, Republican former Carlyle Group executive Glenn Youngkin shocked the political establishment when he defeated longtime Democratic politician Terry McAuliffe in a state former president Joe Biden had won by 10 points just a year earlier.

But now, Democrats look poised to take back the state governor’s mansion. Former Democratic congresswoman Abigail Spanberger has consistently outpolled her Republican opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears, the current lieutenant-governor, by double digits. The margin of her polling lead is notable given Kamala Harris defeated Trump in Virginia last November by roughly six points.


Spanberger, a political moderate who was a CIA officer before she was elected to Congress in 2018, also appears to have successfully distanced herself from a political scandal involving Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for state attorney-general.

National Review Online last month revealed Jones sent text messages fantasising about political violence against his Republican colleagues, and while he apologised for the messages, he did not drop out of his race.

New Jersey
New Jersey is the other state that holds its governor’s elections one year after the presidential vote. Four years ago, former Republican state lawmaker Jack Ciattarelli came within striking distance of defeating Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy, who won re-election by a narrow three-point margin.

This year’s contest could be even closer, with the latest polls showing Ciattarelli — now running for governor for a third time — in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent, congresswoman Mikie Sherrill.


Like Virginia, Harris defeated Trump by six points in New Jersey last November. But voters in the state complain about its high living costs and give Murphy poor approval ratings. Ciattarelli has painted Sherrill as a continuation of Murphy’s governorship, while she has sought to nationalise the race and tie her opponent to Trump.

New Jersey was among the US states with the biggest swings to Trump in last year’s presidential election. But it remains one where Democrats have a huge built-in advantage: the latest official figures show around 850,000 more voters are registered there as Democrats than Republicans.

Ciattarelli will need a high turnout from registered Republicans, and win over independents and disaffected Democrats, if he is to pull off an upset.


Pennsylvania
The largest swing state in the US, Pennsylvania is almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans and has long been seen as a critical political bellwether. While the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, enjoys a remarkably high 60 per cent job approval rating according to the latest Quinnipiac poll, Trump won the state by nearly two points last November.

The party brands will be put to the test again on Tuesday when three Democrat-endorsed justices on the state Supreme Court will face unusually contentious votes on whether they should have their 10-year term renewed.

These so-called “retention” ballots have not been closely watched in the past, and they have rarely resulted in justices being ousted from the bench.

But this year’s votes have taken on outsized significance, with Democratic and Republican party interests pouring millions of dollars into advertising in an effort to persuade voters to their cause.

The court has ruled on issues of major national as well as state significance, and can play an important role in drawing congressional maps or certifying election results.

According to tracking firm AdImpact, Democrats have spent $13.4mn on political ads for the “retention” vote — far outspending Republicans, who have spent $2.8mn.

State and national Democrats have campaigned for a “yes” vote to retain the justices, while Republican groups, including organisations tied to billionaire donor Jeff Yass, have called for a “no” vote.

The state Supreme Court is currently balanced 5-2 in favour of the Democrat-backed justices. If all three lose, the high court would likely be deadlocked 2-2 until the end of 2027.

California
California voters will have the chance on Tuesday to approve “Proposition 50,” an amendment to the state constitution that would allow for a redrawing of the state’s congressional districts. It is being pitched by its Democratic proponents as an opportunity to send a clear rebuke to Trump and the Republican party.

The referendum was put on the ballot by California’s Democrat-controlled state legislature, and the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who has been among the most party’s most forceful critics of Trump.

It was drafted as a response to the efforts of Texas Republicans — at Trump’s urging — to redraw that state’s congressional map to favour their party, potentially adding five Republican-leaning seats in Congress.


The California map as proposed under Proposition 50 could add five Democratic-leaning seats to the state’s congressional delegation.

Newsom at the weekend said he was “deeply confident” the measure would pass.

“We’re seeing overwhelming understanding and recognition of what’s at stake,” he told NBC News. “[Trump] is not screwing around. He’s changing the rules. He’s rigging the game because he knows he’ll lose if all things are equal. He did not expect California to fight fire with fire.”

WSJ : Wall Street Intensifies Scrutiny of Fraud After Spate of Loan Losses

Wall Street Intensifies Scrutiny of Fraud After Spate of Loan Losses
Lenders are increasing due diligence and demanding access to more data

Alleged corporate-borrower frauds are prompting Wall Street to increase due diligence and demand more financial data from companies.
A task force of banking, investment-management and accounting firms is examining the nature of the problem and investor protection.
Recent frauds, including First Brands and Tricolor, have affected regional banks and Wall Street giants, raising concerns about systemic issues.

A string of alleged frauds by corporate borrowers is spurring a reckoning across Wall Street, sending bankers and investors scrambling to prevent future blowups.

Lenders are increasing due diligence and demanding a longer history of financial data from companies. Some are inserting conditions that permit them to do more frequent checkups before agreeing to make loans. A group of the biggest names in banking, investment management and accounting have formed a task force that will take a deeper look at the nature of the problem and how to protect investors.

The frauds that have emerged so far, which involve small to midsize companies in sectors such as autos and telecommunications, haven’t sparked widespread trouble in the market or economy. But they have generated fallout for both regional banks and Wall Street giants such as JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, and the string of revelations has made it harder to dismiss any one case as an isolated event.

“This is sending real ripples in the credit markets,” said Colin Adams, partner at Uzzi & Lall, a restructuring adviser that works with both borrowers and financing providers. “People are really starting to ask: ‘How does this happen?’ ”

The worries emerged in late September, when the aftermarket auto-parts supplier First Brands filed for bankruptcy amid questions over whether it had pledged the same accounts receivable to different lenders. Around the same time, the now-defunct auto dealer and subprime lender Tricolor Holding also filed for bankruptcy, facing similar allegations that it fabricated or double-pledged consumer auto loans.

Since then, regional banks including Utah-based Zions Bancorp have taken losses on loans to California real-estate investors, whom they have accused of fraud. A recent bankruptcy filing also increased scrutiny of an accusation of fraud made by BlackRock’s private-credit arm against one of its borrowers, the owner of two little-known telecom-services companies.

By then, fraud was the talk of industry gatherings. One industry group, the Structured Finance Association, convened a “Fraud Mitigation Task Force,” which will meet regularly over the next few months with the goal of presenting findings at a conference in late February.

The group represents players in one part of the credit market that bundles together pools of loans that are then used to back tiers of bonds of different credit ratings. That corner of the market has only been directly affected by alleged fraud involving Tricolor.

But Michael Bright, the association’s chief executive, said that the new task force will focus on what types of fraud lenders should be looking for and what processes they should follow to detect them—findings that could be relevant to other types of lending. The effort will include representatives from across SFA’s membership, which includes Wall Street banks, asset managers and the big four accounting firms.

Since the structured-finance industry’s infamous role bundling bad loans into supposedly safe bonds ahead of the 2008-09 financial crisis, it has become more regulated and members have taken pride in their improved lending practices. That, Bright said, has added to the sense of urgency to figure out whether recent fraud “is a one-off, or something systemic.”

The collapse of First Brands in particular has brought attention to how a variety of lenders from banks to asset-management and private-credit investors have been jumping into increasingly popular asset-based finance strategies, including providing short-term working-capital financing backed by receivables.

Those strategies remain popular. But now, some of those lenders are asking to take a look at companies’ record of payments on receivables stretching back years rather than months, and inserting language into loan agreements that allow them to do more regular appraisals on the collateral, said Adams of Uzzi & Lall.

Academic studies have suggested that corporate fraud tends to increase during good, if not great, financial environments, when businesses have an incentive to fudge numbers to get funding, said Alexander Dyck, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

In the past, increased revelations of fraud have sometimes coincided with economic downturns and increased default rates. But in this case, default rates on low-rated corporate debt haven’t been surging, and the latest data has generally pointed to a stable economy.

As a result, demand for corporate bonds and loans has remained robust in recent days and weeks, enabling continued borrowing by companies.

One pocket of weakness has been bonds backed by subprime auto loans, where Tricolor’s bankruptcy has exacerbated already existing concerns about low-income car buyers falling behind on their debt payments. Prices of those bonds have slumped in recent weeks, pushing their yields higher relative to those of ultrasafe Treasurys.

Investors are “being cautious around Tricolor, kind of taking a step back, thinking about could this happen to other issuers, and then there’s concern about consumer credit,” said Theresa O’Neil, an asset-backed securities strategist at Bank of America.

George Goudelias, a senior portfolio manager and head of leveraged finance at Seix Investment Advisors, said that fraud allegations were “cause for concern” but still not something that has changed his thinking much about the overall credit market.

His team of analysts remains focused on traditional credit metrics, such as earnings growth and earnings relative to their interest expense, and making sure businesses could withstand an unexpected increase in interest rates.

Investors “really need to look at the whole picture,” he said.

FT : Ørsted to sell half of world’s largest offshore wind farm to Apollo in $6.5

Ørsted to sell half of world’s largest offshore wind farm to Apollo in $6.5bn deal
Investment in project off UK’s coast boosts Danish developer battling rising costs and political challenges

Ørsted has agreed to sell half of the world’s largest offshore wind farm to Apollo in a $6.5bn deal, marking a big step forward for the renewable energy developer as it battles rising costs and political challenges.

Denmark-listed Ørsted on Monday said the US private capital group would take a 50 per cent equity stake in the Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm off the east coast of England and fund half of the project’s remaining construction costs.

The 2.9 gigawatt project, located 160km off the Yorkshire coast, is due to be finished around the end of 2027, and is one of eight major offshore wind projects Ørsted is building around the world.

Ørsted’s business model is to sell stakes in projects to fund the next ones, but selling a share in Hornsea 3 has been particularly important to the company given its recent funding challenges.

Trond Westlie, chief financial officer at Ørsted, said Apollo would bring “infrastructure expertise and scaled capital”, adding the sale was an “important milestone” for the company.

The announcement confirms an earlier report in the Financial Times.

It is the latest in a series of European energy infrastructure deals struck by Apollo, which is investing with RWE in Germany’s electricity grid and led a £4.5bn financing for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant being developed by French energy group EDF in the UK.

Leslie Mapondera, partner at Apollo and head of European credit, said Apollo aimed to serve as a “provider of long-term and flexible capital solutions”.

Apollo has struck a record $17bn in energy infrastructure deals in Europe this year.

Ørsted, 50 per cent owned by the Danish state, is the world’s largest offshore wind developer but has faced a difficult few years as the political and economic backdrop to the industry shifted.

The company walked away from two major projects in the US in August 2023 as rising interest rates pushed up project costs, while more recently it has been under pressure because of US President Donald Trump’s hostility to offshore wind.

Ørsted raised $9bn from investors in a rights issue last month after Trump’s attempts to block a rival developer’s project spooked investors. The presidential intervention thwarted Ørsted’s efforts to sell a stake in its Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York.

The Trump administration then issued a stop-work order against Ørsted’s Revolution Wind project also off the US north-east coast, although Ørsted has persuaded a judge to lift the order.

Selling a stake in Hornsea 3 was a key part of a divestment programme aimed at helping to raise enough funds to continue building the rest of its projects.

Hornsea 3 is an important part of the British government’s plans to decarbonise its electricity system by 2030. The planned 2.9GW capacity will be potentially able to generate enough power across the year to supply the equivalent of about 3mn homes.

FT : China offers tech giants cheap power to boost domestic AI chips

China offers tech giants cheap power to boost domestic AI chips
Beijing introduces grants that slash energy bills by up to half for some of country’s largest data centres

China has increased subsidies that cut energy bills by up to half for some of the country’s largest data centres, as Beijing steps up efforts to boost its domestic chips industry and compete with the US.

Local governments have beefed up incentives to help Chinese tech giants such as ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, which have been hit with higher electricity costs following Beijing’s ban on purchasing Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter.

They added that the new subsidies come after several tech groups complained to regulators about the increased costs of using domestic semiconductors from companies such as Huawei and Cambricon, most of which are less energy-efficient than Nvidia’s.

Local governments in data centre-heavy provinces such as Gansu, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia have responded by offering subsidies that slash big data centres’ electricity bills by as much as 50 per cent, provided that they are powered by domestic chips.

Data centres using chips from foreign vendors such as Nvidia are not qualified for such entitlements, the people said.

The move is a further sign of how China is incentivising its tech companies to break their reliance on Nvidia and boost the country’s homegrown semiconductor industry so it can compete in an AI race against the US.

Electricity required to generate the same amount of tokens — units of compute power — from the current generation of Chinese chips is about 30 to 50 per cent higher than Nvidia’s H20, according to experts.

Huawei, China’s leading chipmaker, has sought to overcome the weaker single-chip computing performance of its flagship Ascend 910C chip by combining them into larger clusters, which has added to the operating electricity costs.

While tech companies typically lease compute power from third-party data centre operators, they still need to build a significant amount themselves to meet surging demand from AI-driven businesses.

Despite the higher energy costs related to using domestic chips, China’s more centralised grid network still provides cheaper and greener electricity than the US with no near-term shortage.

China’s energy-rich remote provinces such as Gansu, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia have become hotspots for data centre clusters.

To attract the biggest projects, these local governments have already been competing to offer some energy subsidies as well as cash incentives.

Some of these are enough to cover a data centre’s operating cost for about a year, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Unit costs of industrial electricity in these provinces are about 30 per cent cheaper than those from the more developed coastal areas of eastern China. With the new subsidies, they will be cut further to about 0.4 yuan, or 5.6 cents, per kWh.

This compares with the average industrial electricity cost of about 9.1 cents per kWh in the US, according to August data published by the US Energy Information Administration.

Electricity prices vary significantly in different US states due to fragmented grid networks, while US tech groups such as Meta and Elon Musk’s xAI are also building their own generators near their data centre clusters in order to lower energy costs.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment.

The local governments of Guizhou, Gansu, Inner Mongolia and China’s National Development and Reform Commission did not respond to requests for comment.

FT : UBS chair warns of ‘looming systemic risk’ from private credit ratings

UBS chair warns of ‘looming systemic risk’ from private credit ratings
Colm Kelleher says insurers are shopping for grades as banks did before 2008 financial crisis

Insurers shopping for better ratings on their private credit assets are creating a “looming systemic risk” to global finance, the chair of UBS has warned.

Speaking at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit on Tuesday, Colm Kelleher said the insurance industry, especially in the US, was engaging in “ratings arbitrage” akin to what banks and other institutions did with subprime loans before the 2008 financial crisis.

Kelleher joins a growing chorus of voices pointing to risks in the multitrillion dollar insurance industry, including its holdings of illiquid private credit loans and opaque disclosures.

“What you’re seeing now is a massive growth in small rating agencies ticking the box for compliance of investment,” said Kelleher, who stressed that regulators were failing to get a handle on the industry even as they were pushing for faster economic growth.

“If you look at the insurance business there is a looming systemic risk coming through because of lack of effective regulation,” he said.

The Bank for International Settlements last month said ratings on private credit assets held by US insurers might have been inflated and warned of the risk of fire sales during periods of financial stress.

Smaller rating agencies have captured market share in private credit by providing so-called private letter ratings, which are typically only visible to an issuer and select investors.

US life insurers, which must hold a certain amount of capital in investment-grade assets, have been among the biggest buyers of private credit and private letter rating services.

The ratings have come under additional scrutiny following the high-profile bankruptcies of subprime automotive lender Tricolor and car parts company First Brands, which led to broader concerns about the opacity of the fast-growing industry.

“In 2007 subprime [lending] was all about rating agency arbitrage,” Kelleher said.

The UBS chair also launched a broadside against Switzerland, saying the country was “losing its lustre” because of competition in wealth management from Hong Kong and Singapore and the damage that its pharmaceutical industry had sustained from Donald Trump’s trade war and higher US tariffs.

“Switzerland is facing a crossroads here because it’s facing some major challenges,” he said.

The Trump administration slapped Switzerland with an unexpectedly high tariff of 39 per cent in August, one of the highest levels for a western country, dealing a blow to watchmakers, pharmaceutical producers and other exporters.

Kelleher also criticised the Swiss government for its banking regulation, in the latest volley as UBS looks to resist regulatory attempts to impose stricter capital requirements following its absorption of rival Credit Suisse.

“Switzerland is having an identity crisis about its role in the world of banking,” he said.

FT : Private equity investor body sounds alarm over rush of retail money

Private equity investor body sounds alarm over rush of retail money
Popularity of evergreen vehicles with wealthy individuals could ‘fundamentally alter the landscape of private equity’

An influential group representing some of the private equity industry’s largest backers has sounded the alarm about the risks to institutional investors from a rush of retail money into the sector.

The number of deals needed to deploy wealthy individuals’ cash could pull managers’ attention away from investing the capital of pension plans and endowments, the Institutional Limited Partners Association warned. 

Fees on offer from evergreen funds, a newly popular type of vehicle suited to retail investors, could encourage buyout firms to prioritise them instead of the traditional funds backed by institutions, ILPA said in a new report.

Billions of dollars are flowing into evergreen funds, and institutional investors have expressed fears privately that this influx of new cash could undermine their standing as the sector’s top clients.

The flood of retail money could “fundamentally alter the landscape of private equity”, said Neal Prunier, managing director of industry affairs at ILPA.

He added that while private equity had historically “outperformed” other asset classes, institutional investors were concerned that “might not continue to the same degree given the types . . . and the volume of investments that are needed to satisfy the retail capital space”.

Evergreen vehicles have no end date and allow investors to redeem their money at regular intervals, while institutions largely lock their capital into closed-end funds for about a decade.

By June, more than €88bn had been invested in evergreen funds in Europe alone, over double the amount in early 2024, according to consultants Novantigo.

ILPA warned that where a private equity group had both a retail vehicle and an institutional fund, those interests might not align and the institutional investors could be the ones to lose out.

“Investment decisions related to individual deals . . . may be influenced by the needs of the retail vehicle, which may conflict with the interests of the institutional fund,” ILPA said.

This was because evergreen vehicles tend to have different incentive structures, the report said, such as paying performance fees based on the total value of holdings rather than on realised investments as in closed-end funds. 

Unlike in traditional funds, which take commitments and call cash when a deal arises, evergreen funds take cash on day one and must deploy it quickly to avoid hurting returns.

ILPA, which counts many large Canadian and US pension funds as well as top sovereign wealth funds as members, said the “greater deal flow” required to satisfy this need could lead to lower quality investments.

The body also suggested that “potentially unlimited” cash from evergreen vehicles for buyout firms to invest alongside traditional funds in deals could leave institutional investors with no insight as to what size or type of deal the fund would do.

ILPA added that institutions could also lose some of their opportunities to invest directly — and traditionally fee-free — in portfolio companies alongside the private equity funds they back, since buyout firms had a fee-paying source of such capital.