Wealthy French could emigrate en masse – Bloomberg

The left-wing alliance that took the most seats in the recent parliamentary elections has promised to raise taxes on the rich.

Many of France’s most wealthy residents may consider leaving the country over concern about political instability and the prospect of higher taxes in light of the recent parliamentary election, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing wealth managers. The recent vote left no party with an absolute majority, resulting in a hung parliament, but a left-wing alliance took the most seats.

Several wealth advisers said many of their panicking clients had already begun transferring capital abroad and started to look into possible expatriation. Most are worried that, while neither the far-right nor far-left won the election outright, some of the parties’ campaign proposals, such as higher taxes, could soon become law.

“We have new clients like top executives who are asking what they can do to shield themselves. Following Brexit there was an influx of bankers into France, but these high-earners will leave because they won’t want to pay more taxes,” Xenia Legendre, a Paris-based managing partner at Hogan Lovells law firm, told the news outlet.

The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), which won the most seats in the election, promised to tax the super profits of companies and reinstate a wealth tax on the rich. Such legislation would run counter to the policies put in place by President Emmanuel Macron, which are considered more friendly to the wealthy and even earned him the nickname “president of the rich.”

“People who can leave will leave if extreme policies are adopted. France would no longer be attractive for foreigners, and the rich would go,” Emmanuel Angelier, head of wealth management firm La Financiere d’Orion, predicted.

According to Julien Magitteri, a private wealth adviser at Barnes Family Office by Côme, some people started moving capital out of France even before the second round of voting, largely to countries such as Switzerland and Luxembourg. Most wealth managers say that places such as Italy, Dubai, Singapore, and the US are also among the destinations being considered by many of France’s top earners.

France is home to some of the world’s richest people, including Bernard Arnault, Europe’s richest man and head of the luxury goods company LVMH; Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of the beauty empire L’Oréal, considered the richest woman in the world; and the Wertheimer brothers, who control the Parisian fashion house Chanel.

According to a poll conducted by the agency Elabe earlier this week, seven out of ten French are dissatisfied with the results of the elections and the composition of the new National Assembly, saying that the country is now “ungovernable.”

Image credit: Nsay Benajah