It's not stealing from the market, but it's essentially giving away money to shareholders by spending to inflate the stock price.
In a way it's similar to dividends, but not taxes in the same way.
Basically the logic behind the French government reasoning is "we're giving you money to support your business and your employees, not to give it away to shareholders".
Note that this wasn't the initial plan of the French governement, initially the plan was to pose no conditions, just saying "please be responsible in your choice". It's after the public backlash that they finally put conditions.
Raising the value of a stock doesn’t make the shareholders money unless they sell their holdings (although it might incentivize doing that) as compared to dividends which encourage holding on to your investments so long as they pay out nicely.
The real beneficiaries of buybacks are executives and employees with vested stocks. They both lose money on dividends and directly benefit from the contraction in available shares.
Only if the company doing the buybacks pays out dividends in the first place. (UAL doesn’t.) But the cost of buying out those shares is significantly more than the slight increase in dividends yields in all cases.
In a way it's similar to dividends, but not taxes in the same way.
Basically the logic behind the French government reasoning is "we're giving you money to support your business and your employees, not to give it away to shareholders".
Note that this wasn't the initial plan of the French governement, initially the plan was to pose no conditions, just saying "please be responsible in your choice". It's after the public backlash that they finally put conditions.