Canal+ flags smaller line-up of films in 2025 but hails Paddington hit
This was down 3.3% on the same period a year ago, driven by contracts coming to an end, including with Disney in France and the Uefa Champions League, it said.
For the group's film and TV production business, which includes StudioCanal, revenues dipped by about 3% year on year.
This was mainly because of a smaller line-up of films sold internationally over the first half of 2025, compared with 2024, which included the releases of Back To Black and Wicked Little Letters.
StudioCanal's Back To Black was released last year (Ian West/PA)
But the impact of fewer releases was partly offset by the success of major films including Paddington In Peru, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, and We Live In Time.
Canal+ said there had been 'record viewership' in cinema, series and live sports events across its regions over the period.
The company floated on the London Stock Exchange in December in one of the biggest new listings for the City in several years.
The decision for Paris-based Canal+ to list in London was hailed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves as a 'vote of confidence' in the UK's stock market.
The company had 25.7 million subscribers at the end of June – about 1.2% fewer than it had the same time last year.
It has been eyeing cost reductions across Europe which it hopes will boost profits.
Maxime Saada, chief executive of Canal+, said: 'I am pleased with all we have accomplished at Canal+ since our listing.
'Our strategy of bringing our in-house content together with content from the world's best studios, sports competitions and streaming platforms, and super-aggregating it all on our enhanced Canal+ app for the benefit of our customers, provides us with a unique value proposition.'
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Telegraph
19 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Middle-income workers shoulder biggest tax burden increase
Middle-class workers are shouldering the biggest increase in the tax burden thanks to a stealth raid on thresholds, analysis suggests. The share of income tax paid by those who earn between £43,000 and £61,900 rose from 15.1pc to 17pc between 2021-22 and 2025-26, according to the TaxPayers' Alliance. During the same five-year period, the share of income tax paid by the top 1pc, those earning more than £201,000 a year, fell from 30.7pc to 26.6pc, the pressure group found. It comes as Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces a £50bn black hole in the public finances and declining tax revenue as high-net-worth individuals look to move abroad. Analysis by the Financial Times this month revealed there had been a 40pc rise in directors moving abroad since Labour's autumn Budget. The Taxpayers' Alliance report found the proportion of total income tax receipts increased for every group except for the top 1pc of earners, thanks to a series of stealth taxes first introduced by the Conservatives. Income tax thresholds, including the £12,570 tax-free 'personal allowance', were frozen at the 2021 budget by then chancellor Rishi Sunak until 2025-26. A year later, his successor, Jeremy Hunt, extended the freeze until 2027-28. Despite promising not to raise taxes on working people, Sir Keir Starmer has not ruled out extending the freeze further to 2029-30. Keeping thresholds frozen means earners lose a larger share of their incomes to tax, as inflation pushes up wages in a process known as fiscal drag. The stealth raid means almost 2.9 million more people will pay the basic rate of income tax in 2025-26 than in 2021-22, while over 2.6 million more will pay the higher rate. Including other rates, almost 6 million more people are forecast to be paying income tax than in 2021-22. John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'This is the sad but inevitable result of successive governments' assortment of anti-affluence tax policies, which penalise aspiration and success. 'The UK is now trapped in a doom loop with the Chancellor desperately scrabbling around for more cash to fill the fiscal black hole and increasingly finding her only option is to come after the middle classes. 'Rachel Reeves needs to now show some humility and reverse the policies that have done so much to drive away high earners.' The respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research on Tuesday warned slowing economic growth, a weak jobs market and Labour's failure to commit to welfare reform meant Ms Reeves was on course to miss her borrowing targets by £41.2bn. When combined with the £9.9bn of headroom the Chancellor has committed to keeping, it means she is facing a £51.1bn deficit in the autumn that will either have to be solved by raising taxes or cutting spending. The study also underlined the importance for the Treasury's balance sheet to keep the highest earners in Britain. Despite the proportion of tax paid by the top 1pc of earners falling, the group still accounts for more than a quarter of all income tax receipts. Analysis of Companies House by the Financial Times found that 3,790 company directors had left Britain between October and July compared with 2,712 in the same period a year earlier. Significant names have included Richard Gnodde, Goldman Sachs ' most senior banker outside the US, Nassef Sawiris, the Aston Villa co-owner, and British property tycoon brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone. It comes after Labour launched a wide-ranging tax raid after coming to power last year. This included abolishing the non-dom status and tightening inheritance tax rules. Laura Suter, of AJ Bell, said: 'Government tax policy in the past few years has had the dual outcome of pushing some of the wealthiest to leave the UK and also landing more taxpayers with higher tax bills at the same time. 'Together, this means that an increasing proportion of the total tax bill of the country is paid by middle earners, rather than the super-rich. 'Looking ahead, any potential tax-raising measures that Rachel Reeves makes in her next Budget could exacerbate this dynamic further.' Trevor Williams, a former chief economist at Lloyds Bank, previously warned Britain was facing a millionaires' exodus. Mr Williams said: 'Since 2014, the number of resident millionaires in the UK dropped by 9pc compared with the world's 10 wealthiest countries' global average growth of more than 40pc. 'Over the same period, the US saw a 78pc increase in millionaires – the fastest wealth growth [among these countries].' The Treasury insisted that under its Plan for Change it would keep more money in people's pockets. A spokesman said: 'This government inherited the previous government's policy of frozen tax thresholds. At the Budget and the Spring Statement, the Chancellor announced that we would not extend that freeze. 'We are also protecting payslips for working people by keeping our promise to not raise the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, employee National Insurance or VAT. That's the Plan for Change – protecting people's incomes and putting money into people's pockets.'
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Reeves has driven Britain to the brink. Full-blown crisis will soon be upon us
Britain's fiscal reckoning has arrived. The £20bn 'black hole' has, according to one new estimate, doubled in size under Rachel Reeves's dubious stewardship. Most of the money we are now borrowing is going not towards servicing our debt, but the interest on that debt. Colossal off-the-book liabilities, such as public sector pensions, have been hidden from voters by successive governments. They are now falling due. For years, the country has behaved like a household hooked on payday loans. Now, the bills have come through the letterbox and we've no cash left to cover them. Even the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, traditionally Left-leaning, is warning that if the Chancellor is to remain within her fiscal rules, she must raise taxes or cut spending by £51bn. Not even the Office for Budget Responsibility can maintain the fiction that the current trajectory is sustainable. Reductions in spending are out of the question, as the ludicrous welfare row exposed. What many may not realise is that around 75 per cent of government expenditure is mandated – benefits, pensions, for instance – and cannot be avoided in the short-run. Only a quarter is discretionary – areas such as transport, or defence. This means that major spending cuts would require primary legislation, which feckless Labour backbenchers will never swallow. It also means that further tax rises, which Reeves in January insisted would not be necessary, are inevitable. No wonder asset managers are telling clients to prepare for 'very real, very targeted moves on people with portfolios, pensions and property'. Keir Starmer has refused to rule out further tax increases in the autumn Budget. Be afraid, be very afraid. How did we get into this mess? Not since 2001 has a chancellor presented a balanced Budget. Despite lip-service to fiscal probity, the desire to splurge has consistently outweighed the need for restraint. Lord, give me continence, but not yet. Politicians, of whatever stripe, have engaged in a collective delusion: that the Treasury is so awash with cash it is scrambling to find things to spend it on. Pay rises across the public sector? Green subsidies? A pointless railway to Birmingham? Bring it on. But the overall state of the public finances tells a grim story. In 2024-25, the state is projected to spend £1.2tn. Some £450bn of this will go on welfare, health and pensions – more than the entire take from income tax, National Insurance and VAT combined. The UK entered this century with debt at around 30 per cent of GDP; it's now pushing 100 per cent. The tax burden is at a post-War high, set to be around 37.5 per cent of GDP for the rest of this Parliament, yet core public services are crumbling and the crowd yells out for more. Polling suggests the public are closer to grasping our fiscal reality than politicians, with economic optimism now half what it was in July 2024. But even growing pessimism isn't enough to slake their thirst for more spending. Some 9.1 million people of working age are currently economically inactive. Over half of households are taking more from the state than they are putting in. As the number of net contributors shrinks, who, exactly, do people believe is footing the bill? More than two centuries ago, Adam Smith wrote: 'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence... but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice.' Peace is uncertain, the administration of our increasingly wonky justice has time lags measured in years, and taxes increasingly drag us down. Council tax on our homes. The licence fee. VAT on virtually every product we consume. Vehicle Excise Duty. Congestion charges, tolls, Ulez. The sugar tax. A Digital Services tax on any online orders or subscriptions. Income tax. National Insurance Contributions raised for employers, but which in the end the employee will pay. It's enough to drive us to – massively taxed, of course – drink. And the more convoluted the system becomes, the easier it is for governments to mask the scale of the extraction and the harder it is to scrutinise – or object. Taxes should be visible and just. Currently, they are neither. This is not by accident, but design. Worse still, the public has been fed a series of monstrous lies about tax-and-spend. That it is not only necessary for the state to plunder our earnings and assets, but moral. That squeezing the private sector to fund the public mysteriously delivers growth. That the 'rich' aren't paying their 'fair share', despite all the evidence to the contrary. That we could tax the 'wealthy' without punishing the middle classes. Of all Labour's pledges, none has unravelled faster than the self-defeating promise to shield 'working people' from tax hikes. They punished businesses, and since the start of the year, employment is down, unemployment is up, wage growth has stalled and vacancies are falling. They waged war on independent schools, and since January 50 have closed, with all the job casualties that brings. The affluent, as the Telegraph this week reports, have paid their fees in advance – a luxury poorer parents, those who strain every sinew to privately educate their children, cannot afford. The list goes on. Reeves's inheritance tax assault on family farms has triggered the worst collapse in rural businesses since 2017. Non-doms are fleeing almost as fast as small boats are arriving, taking with them billions in tax receipts, spending and investment. Labour said they would deliver the kind of 'growth' that would haul us out of the post-lockdown economic crisis, but are giving us stagnation. Even if they renege their manifesto pledge not to hike income tax, VAT or National Insurance, it might not be enough. 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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on the London Stock Exchange: its struggles are symptoms of a broken growth model
'We are, it is admitted, the financial centre of the world,' said the chairman of the Union Bank of London in 1903. Back then, the City of London was the world's banker, and its stock exchange was worth as much as the New York and Paris exchanges combined. Today, the stock market is shrinking at its fastest rate since 2010. While the mining company Glencore's recent decision to retain its London listing provided a temporary boost, it won't stem the tide. Companies are increasingly ditching London and moving to Europe and the US. Rachel Reeves hopes to revive the exchange by pushing stock ownership, encouraging people to become their own portfolio managers. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has its own proposals, including tax breaks and looser bonus rules. Both of these plans are based on deregulation, and neither addresses the underlying problem: Britain's ailing stock market is both a cause and consequence of stubbornly low business investment and a broken growth model. In theory, the stock exchange gives companies access to capital, which they invest in their businesses, making those more productive and causing the economy to grow. Pension funds and savers who buy their shares gain from this growth (as do workers, whose wages are supposed to go up as productivity rises). But the stock exchange isn't providing enough access to capital, and listed companies aren't investing to boost growth. British pension funds, once major buyers of UK equities, have retreated. Many have shifted to gilts, or headed to the US to take advantage of the tech boom. In 1997, UK pension schemes allocated 53% of their assets to UK equities; today, that figure just is 6%. British businesses have grown more slowly. At the same time, their shareholders have pushed aggressively for dividend payments, producing a toxic spiral of stagnant growth and diminishing prosperity. Instead of boosting investment, this has redistributed wealth upwards. Dividend payments grew nearly six times faster than real wages between 2000 and 2019, and British companies now spend less on research and development than their European equivalents. The dividend yield is about twice as high for UK shares as it is for US stocks. The British economy excels at rentierism – less so at the investment that would boost productivity. Firms listed in Britain are consequently vulnerable to foreign and private equity takeovers, while successful companies are heading overseas to raise money. The British semiconductor firm Arm was worth £24bn when Japan's Softbank bought it in 2016. Despite desperate lobbying from politicians, Arm couldn't be persuaded to list its shares in London when it went public. Instead, the UK-based company listed on the US Nasdaq, and has since gained approximately £85bn in value, most of which accrued to investors overseas. The CBI wants Ms Reeves to coax pension funds into investing more in British businesses. An influx of pension capital would help, but it isn't going to fix an economic model skewed towards wealth extraction. Public investment must form part of the solution. Government-backed regional banks could lend money to upstart companies outside London. Ms Reeves should also do more to force existing firms to invest in productive activities. Taxes on share buybacks would be a good starting point. So too would mandating employee directors on company boards. But such proposals would require a sense of political imagination – something that the current government doesn't seem to possess. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
