AMF France v. X and A (issuer share buy-back breaches, 2005)
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.
On 7 April 2005 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that a listed clothing company had exceeded the 25 per cent volume limit for its own-share buy-back on 62 of 145 sessions, using several brokers so as to hide the concentration. It fined the company EUR 10,000, rejected the other charges and cleared its chairman A. The Commission described the conduct as altering market operation, not as price manipulation.
The record
| Agency | AMF (France) |
|---|---|
| Release number | SAN-2005-10 |
| Date filed | 2005-04-07 |
| Date resolved | 2005-04-07 |
| Court | Commission des sanctions (AMF, France) |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | equities |
| Instruments | Shares of company X (own-share buy-back) |
| Venue | Euronext Paris (Second Marché) |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | X ; A |
| Techniques |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- €10k
What is alleged to have happened
The second section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 7 April 2005 after a hearing that day. A COB inquiry into trading in the shares of clothing retailer X, listed on the Second Marché of Euronext Paris until 2004, led to grievances being notified to X and its chairman A on 15 October 2004.
The notices alleged inaccurate information in the information note on the company's share buy-back programme, failure to respect the conditions under which an issuer's trading in its own shares is presumed legitimate, and failure to report share cancellations to the COB.
The Commission found that the group exceeded the volume cap (25 per cent of the average daily volume over the previous fifteen trading days) on 62 of the 145 sessions where it traded, and on 27 sessions it accounted for over 90 per cent of trading. It rejected the explanation of confusion over the reference period, since the cap was exceeded about fifty times even on the longer period, and noted that daily trading dashboards were kept. Orders were also spread across several brokers, which it read as an effort to mask the concentration. It held that this altered market operation and misled investors about the intensity of buy-back purchases, though the investigation report did not find an effect on the price.
It rejected the charges on the information note (errors judged immaterial) and on the cancellation reports, and held the volume breach attributable only to the issuer. It fined X EUR 10,000 given the limited impact, cleared A, and ordered publication.
The record does not show any price effect, and the Commission did not find one. The decision is a buy-back safe-harbour breach, so it is a doubtful fit for this library; the technique tag is left empty. The decision does not say whether it was later reformed or annulled on appeal. The AMF anonymised the respondents as X and A.
This library tags the matter as an issuer share buy-back case (no technique tag assigned). 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.
Timeline
- 2005-04-07 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.