PARIS (Reuters) – The growth in earnings per share of French financial stocks could be particularly affected by the exceptional tax on large groups outlined on Tuesday by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, analysts at Barclays estimate in a note.

“Large companies which make significant profits will be called upon to contribute to the effort to reduce the debt,” confirmed Michel Barnier on Tuesday during his general policy speech to the National Assembly.

The Prime Minister did not give further details on the contours of this contribution but several media reported that the government was working on an exceptional tax increasing the total taxation of certain large companies to 33.5% compared to a rate of l Corporate tax set at 25% in 2024.

“At a sector level, we see that financials, communications/media services and utilities would be most negatively affected by a rise in corporate taxes,” report Barclays analysts who attempted to assess this on Tuesday. assess the consequences of such an increase of more than eight percentage points in the corporate tax rate before Michel Barnier’s speech.

“For French banks in particular, our analysts consider that the potential increase in the tax rate could remove up to 4% of earnings per share,” they said in their note.

Such a decision would cost 2.5 percentage points to CAC 40 earnings per share growth for 2025, reducing it to 6.9%, the analysts add.

According to their calculation, any one percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate in France would result in a decrease of 0.26% in earnings per share in 2025 for Axa, of 0.3% for BNP Paribas and of 0. 5% for Société Générale, Crédit Agricole and Amundi.

On the stock market, Société Générale, Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas shares fell by 1.8%, 1.4% and 1% respectively around 3:00 p.m. GMT on Tuesday while the CAC 40 fell by 0.94%. Amundi lost 0.45% and Axa fell 0.84%.

(Written by Bertrand De Meyer, edited by Blandine Hénault)

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