MSN MoneyCentral – Nicolas Sarkozy will push for a European tax on “speculative movements” by financial groups, such as hedge funds, if he wins this year’s French presidential elections.
The centre-right candidate to replace Jacques Chirac said in comments published by Wednesday’s Les Echos, the Financial Times’s sister newspaper, that he aimed to “raise moral standards and improve security in financial capitalism”.
Mr Sarkozy spent much of the interview outlining plans to cut taxes, reduce state spending and make France work longer. He also bashed the tax-and-spend proposals from Ségolène Royal, his socialist rival, as “a return to the Jospin years”, referring to the last socialist prime minister.
But his plan to tax financial flows is likely to dismay US and UK financial groups, as well as parts of the French business community, which largely prefers him to Ms Royal.
