Bloomberg News
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
PARIS: President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has asked the International Monetary Fund to study whether a windfall tax could be levied on corporate profits worldwide, his finance minister, Christine Lagarde, said Wednesday.
Asked whether companies like the oil major Total, which reported Wednesday a 64 percent jump in fourth-quarter profit, should face such a tax, Lagarde said in an LCI television interview that any levy would have to be imposed globally.
"If we're going to go down that road, we have to make sure it's on a worldwide basis," Lagarde said on the cable television channel. Sarkozy has asked the IMF "to think about how we could best benefit from this kind of windfall tax."
Sarkozy last year rejected the idea of a windfall tax as "absurd" when it was suggested in the presidential election campaign by rival Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate. `
"Capital is mobile," Sarkozy said in February 2007. Companies like Total would record their profit "elsewhere," he said.
Paris-based Total, one of the largest European oil companies, said profit rose after new projects in Qatar, Angola and Azerbaijan lifted production and crude approached $100 a barrel. "It would be wrong to just single out Total," Lagarde said.
The finance minister said she also wants ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel maker, to give the government details of its investment strategy for France and "what part French workers will play."
Sarkozy said last week he wanted ArcelorMittal's chief executive, Lakshmi Mittal, to review a plan to cut 600 jobs at a plant in eastern France.
[Source:International Herald Tribune]
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