AMF France v. X, A and B (price manipulation, 2004)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 5, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the French decision; an independent second reading of 60 of the AMF records agreed on every field for 54 and on the core fields for 59. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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On 18 March 2004 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that a trader at firm X placed a large buy order in the opening auction of a newly listed share on 8 February 2002 that he meant to cancel just before the open, and that this held the indicative opening price up while the firm bought. It warned X and the trader A and fined X EUR 30,000; manager B was cleared.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€30k

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in EUR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The Commission des sanctions (second section) of the AMF decided the matter on 18 March 2004, after a hearing. The proceedings began with a disciplinary notice of 28 March 2003 to firm X and notices of 2 October 2003 to two of its employees, A and B. The case arose from an inspection report on X's trading on the first listing day of company Y on the second market of Euronext Paris, 8 February 2002.

The notification of grievances alleged that A, the trader for X's own account, placed a buy order for 20,000 shares at EUR 15.00 and withdrew it just before the open, so as to keep the indicative opening price artificially high. It also alleged that B, head of own-account dealing, had not supervised him, and that X's Geneva branch had not warned a Swiss bank client enough about the risk of an at-any-price sell order.

The Commission found that a Swiss client's sell order of 17,500 shares at any price had pulled the indicative opening price from the EUR 15.00 subscription price down to EUR 7.50. A then entered the 20,000-share buy order at EUR 15.00, plus three hidden buy orders at lower prices for the same quantity. It cancelled the first order only seconds before noon, when no market reaction was possible, and the shares opened at EUR 8.50. X bought 13,938 shares at that price and resold part the same day at a gain it put at above 65 per cent. Recorded remarks of the traders showed the order was meant to be cancelled. The Commission held this breached the rules on misleading other market members and on deliberately provoking price shifts at the close or open, and that X also failed to prevent manipulation.

It rejected the grievance about warning the Swiss client (a sophisticated professional who had been told the test results) and cleared B, who was absent at the time and had trained and supervised his team. It issued a warning and a EUR 30,000 financial penalty to X, a warning to A with no financial penalty, and ordered publication.

The record does not show what the Swiss client or the other market members lost, and the decision does not say whether it was later reformed or annulled on appeal. The AMF anonymised the respondents as X, A and B.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the decision.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2004-03-18 Commission des sanctions decision

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• AMF decision page
• Decision (PDF, French)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 5, 2026. submit a correction.