Retouching the law to maintain the attractiveness of France and facilitate the financing of French companies: this is the objective of the bill from Renaissance MP Alexandre Holroyd, which he hopes to present to the National Assembly at the beginning of April.
While the European financial center is in full swing around the possible creation of a single capital market between the 27, France wants to provide a small brick at the national level, explained Monday during a meeting with the press M . Holroyd, elected from a constituency of French people abroad including the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries.
Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, many financial players have settled in Paris, creating 7,000 direct and indirect jobs, mainly in Le-de-France, he explains.
To ensure that this competitiveness continues, the MP has imagined several technical measures aimed at French and European businesses and financial players. Mr. Holroyd hopes to have the text examined in public session from April 8 in the National Assembly.
It is important to continue sending messages about France’s competitiveness to the international business community, said Mr. Holroyd, in a context of constrained public finances and tax expenditures strictly controlled by the government.
Furthermore, businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to finance themselves and the proposed law should therefore help them attract foreign capital more easily.
In detail, the text aims to facilitate IPOs by promoting the development of shares with multiple voting rights. This mechanism, common in the United States, allows the founders of a company to raise capital while maintaining greater control than with ordinary shares.
A second measure would allow private equity funds to invest in listed companies whose capitalization reaches up to 500 million euros, compared to 150 million at present.
This system would make it possible to bring (…) a little less than a hundred European companies into this investment pool, which would be added to the 417 companies with capitalization of less than 150 million, details Alexandre Holroyd.
The MP would also like to make it easier for financial players to separate themselves from risk takers, employees who are both very well paid and better protected in France than in other European countries.
The idea is to try to prevent the executives concerned, for example traders, from having both their butter and their money, he illustrated.
But with French law known to protect employees, we still need to find a mechanism and be able to apply it only to a very restricted scope of professions and activities.