1. The “Papin pact”: employee buyouts, forty years after the 1984 RES law
In an interview with Les Echos, Serge Papin, France’s minister for SMEs, trade, crafts, tourism and purchasing power, detailed a scheme presented as the mirror image of the Dutreil pact (the French regime easing family business transmission): making it easier for employees to buy the companies they work for. The stakes are quantified — about 370,000 French companies to be transmitted by 2030, 500,000 within ten years, 3 million employees concerned. The three-stage “Papin pact” would take effect January 1: a 30% super-depreciation allowance for buyouts of SMEs under 250 employees (raised to 60% for micro-companies under ten employees) on production-equipment investments; registration duties all but eliminated on the purchase of shares or of the business (fonds de commerce) in employee buyouts — from 3% to 0.1%, meaning about €250 instead of €7,800 on a €250,000 business; and a sellers’ leg, with the capital-gains tax exemption raised from €500,000 to €1 million and a doubling of the retirement-departure allowance. The minister counts about 6,500 employee buyouts of small businesses a year today, wants to double that, at an initial cost of “a few tens of millions of euros”; about 35,000 companies a year could be eligible for the super-depreciation.
History gives the measure its depth — provided it is quoted from the text. The French law of July 9, 1984 on the development of economic initiative created the RES, the rachat de l’entreprise par ses salariés (employee buyout): employees form a holding company that must hold more than 50% of the voting rights of the acquired company (and be majority-owned by them); subject to finance-ministry approval, that holding receives a tax credit equal to the interest due on the acquisition loan (Article 220 quater of the French tax code). Employees deduct from their salary the interest on their own subscription loans, capped at 50% of gross pay and FRF 100,000 (Article 83 bis), and the holding’s share purchases escape the 4.80% registration duty (Article 726). That mechanism — the acquisition debt serviced, in effect, by the target’s own tax — is what acclimated the LBO in France. The law of June 17, 1987 then removed the approval requirement; the finance law for 1988 created France’s tax consolidation regime (intégration fiscale, Article 223 A of the tax code), allowing any holding company owning at least 95% of its target to set the interest on its acquisition debt against the target’s taxable profit. That generic tool is what technically superseded the RES, and has carried French LBOs ever since. Forty years on, the Papin pact revives the spirit of the scheme with more modest tools — super-depreciation, registration duties, capital gains — and still without a fund on the cap table. The unknown is that of any measure announced before a budget: the finance bill that carries it still has to pass.
Sources: Les Echos (interview), Légifrance (French tax code, Art. 220 quater and 83 bis).
📖 Going further: The PE Research analyses (in French)
2. Follow-up from last week — The “true returns” of French retail-accessible Private Equity: 5.14% a year, and an index to handle with care
The Les Echos investigation flagged last week has delivered its numbers. Les Echos, the French business daily (article by Sandra Pirrmann), published the quarterly results of the RPEI, the index of French platform Ramify that aggregates the private markets actually accessible to retail investors — evergreen funds, secondaries, private debt, buyout-transmission, growth capital and real estate. The verdict: +1.23% in Q1 2026, +23.76% cumulative since January 2022, or 5.14% annualized, on an index basis and before fees. That beats the average French euro-denominated insurance fund (2.6% net in 2025, per France Assureurs and the ACPR), but falls well short of the big equity indices over a comparable period: about 7.5% annualized for the MSCI World, about 7% for the CAC 40 with dividends reinvested. In Q1 2026, evergreen funds posted the best gain (+1.64%); since January 2022, private debt remains the most dynamic pocket (+30.16% cumulative).
The index’s rigor deserves qualification, on the strength of Ramify’s own published methodology. The index is capitalization-weighted with a 20% cap per fund, across 64 funds and €11.4 billion of assets as of Q1 2026 — but the constituent list is not disclosed, the calculation is done in-house with no independent calculation agent, and the history before the first publication (September 2024) is by construction reconstructed. Two conventions mechanically smooth the results: funds reporting only semi-annually are counted at zero in the first and third quarters, and the history of a fund that stops reporting is removed from the database. Evergreen funds accounted for about 57% of the index’s capitalization at the end of 2024. Above all, the conflict of interest must be stated: Ramify, a French online wealth-management platform founded in 2021 by Olivier Herbout and Samy Ouardini, two Goldman Sachs alumni, regulated as a financial investment adviser and broker (ORIAS), which raised an €11 million Series A in June 2024 from 13books Capital, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, Newfund, AG2R La Mondiale and Crédit Agricole Brie Picardie, itself distributes some thirty funds of the asset class its index measures — EQT, ARCHIMED, Ardian, Tikehau and Eurazeo feature in its catalogue. The index is a commercial tool as much as a measurement. The institutional benchmark exists: the France Invest/EY study measures a 12.4% net ten-year IRR for French private equity at the end of 2024 — different universe, vehicles and methods, but the gap between what institutions earn and the 5.14% before fees of “retail-accessible” private markets is the real question the index puts on the table.
Sources: Les Echos, Ramify (RPEI methodology), France Invest/EY.
📖 Going further: The PE Research analyses (in French)
3. CVC settles its succession — like a whole generation of GPs
Two announcements in three days, in the order that matters. On September 9, CVC settled its succession: Rob Lucas will hand over by the first quarter of 2028 to two co-CEOs — Todd Sisitsky, hired away from TPG after more than two decades there, most recently as President, and Peter Rutland, nineteen years with the firm. On September 11, CVC set the initial target for its Europe/Americas Fund X: €26 billion of fee-paying commitments, with a formal launch in January 2027 — Fund IX had closed at €27.3 billion, 9% above target. The sequencing is deliberate: governance gets settled before the book opens, not the other way around. On the healthcare segment, Lyon-based ARCHIMED illustrated the other end of the fundraising market the same week: MED IV closed at its €1.5 billion hard cap, three times oversubscribed in under six months.
Above all, CVC joins an industry settling its successions one after another. Partners Group announced on September 1 that Roberto Cagnati and Juri Jenkner become co-CEOs on January 1, 2027, with David Layton moving to Chief Investment Officer. EQT handed the chief executive role to Per Franzén in 2025. Carlyle went outside to recruit Harvey Schwartz in 2023. KKR installed Joe Bae and Scott Nuttall as co-CEOs back in 2021 — the year Marc Rowan took the helm at Apollo after Leon Black’s departure. The founders’ generation and its first successors are handing over everywhere, most often to home-grown tandems; and the hiring of Todd Sisitsky opens, by ricochet, the next question at TPG, which loses its President.
The Financial Times (Due Diligence newsletter) widens the European picture: beyond Partners Group (Roberto Cagnati and Juri Jenkner co-CEOs on January 1, 2027) and EQT, Cinven changed chief executives in 2025 and Permira had named a pair of co-CEOs back in 2024 to succeed Kurt Björklund. The contrast is American: Stephen Schwarzman still leads Blackstone — with Jonathan Gray tending to the day-to-day —, Marc Rowan has solidified himself atop Apollo, KKR’s succession (Scott Nuttall and Joseph Bae) is already five years old, and Harvey Schwartz has stabilized Carlyle.
Sources: CVC (press releases), ARCHIMED (press release), Financial Times (Due Diligence).
📖 Going further: “What is a Continuation Fund?”
4. Sovereignty: Mistral raises €3 billion, defense lines up 248 VC funds
The largest raise ever by a European technology company at this stage: Mistral AI closed a €3 billion Series D at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, led by Samsung Electronics and co-led by the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund, with PSG Equity, Andreessen Horowitz, ASML, NVIDIA, General Catalyst and Bpifrance, the French state investment bank (release of September 8). The round puts France’s AI champion in a valuation category that did not exist in Europe — and the EQT-managed European fund in the front row of technological-sovereignty financing.
Sovereignty is also irrigating defense venture capital: per Preqin data (Sector in Focus: Aerospace & Defense, Michael Patterson, data as of June 2026), the number of VC funds in market targeting aerospace and defense has grown from 55 in January 2020 to 248 in January 2026, with targeted capital multiplied more than fivefold — from $4.8 billion to $25.7 billion. Two hundred and forty-eight funds chasing a still-narrow pool of investable companies: the price-discipline question will arise there too.
Sources: Bpifrance (press release), Preqin.
📖 Going further: “VC vs. Buyout in Five Rounds”
5. VC research: when missing skills kill the deal
A study published August 14 in the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research — co-authored by researchers from Politecnico di Milano, Bologna, Politecnico di Torino and Bergamo with three economists of the European Investment Fund (Kraemer-Eis, Botsari, Lang) — measures what investors observe without always quantifying it: skill gaps in founding teams significantly increase the probability of a write-off. The material comes from the EIF’s 2023 VC survey of 460 European venture capital managers. The most cited gaps on the startup side: leadership and people management (47% of respondents), selling (42.4%), strategic planning (34.1%), finance (30.7%) — an average of 2.44 gaps per portfolio company, in skills the manager itself possesses.
The most striking result lies elsewhere: the more experienced and better-equipped the manager, the more the investee team’s gaps raise the probability of a write-off — the best-armed VCs walk away faster from teams that fail to internalize their guidance. The authors draw a policy conclusion: founder human capital is both a value driver and an exit trigger, and building it deserves the attention of support programs.
Source: International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research (Emerald).
📖 Going further: “VC vs. Buyout in Five Rounds”
References of the week
Les Echos — Interview with Serge Papin
Légifrance — French tax code, Article 220 quater (July 11, 1984 version)
Les Echos — The true returns of private equity (Ramify index)
Ramify — RPEI methodology
France Invest / EY — Net performance of French private equity at end-2024 (July 2025)
CVC — Leadership succession: Sisitsky and Rutland co-CEOs by Q1 2028 (September 9)
CVC — Europe/Americas Fund X initial target set at €26bn (September 11)
ARCHIMED — MED IV closed at €1.5 billion hard cap (September 9)
Financial Times — Due Diligence: Europe’s new guard in private markets
Partners Group — 2026 Interim Financial Results Report (September 1)
Bpifrance — Mistral raises €3 billion (September 8)
Preqin — Sector in Focus: Aerospace & Defense
IJEBR (Emerald) — When missing skills kill the deal: evidence from venture capital write-offs (August 14)
Gilles Mougenot — Senior Advisor at Argos Fund, former Chairman of France Invest
