AMF France v. A, B, C, D and X (insider trading, 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.

Report an error in this record (amf-fr-san-2005-12-insider-trading-2005) by email

On 21 April 2005 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that A, an employee of bank V, had passed on a planned simplified takeover bid for company S in March 2002, and that staff of a branch of firm X had bought S shares for clients on the tip. It fined D, C and A (EUR 3,000, 2,000 and 2,000), banned D from his activities for two months, reprimanded B and warned X.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

€7k

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 first section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 21 April 2005 after a hearing that day. Grievances had been notified on 14 April 2004 to A, B, C, D and firm X, following a COB inquiry into unusual purchases of company S shares before bank V's announcement on 2 April 2002 that it would buy a stake in S and launch a simplified public offer.

A, an employee of bank V, was charged with passing on inside information to an investor, E. B, C and D, the three main staff of a branch of firm X, were charged with receiving it and using it, and X with weak controls and failures to record orders.

The Commission found that A, who knew the plan, its timetable and its terms from a meeting on 25 March 2002, told E by telephone on 26 March 2002; A admitted this and called it an accident, which the Commission said did not matter since the breach is objective. It found that B, an assistant, bought 400 S shares for E and, with D, 250 for a discretionary client, and advised E to place orders before a trading suspension. The call was followed live by C and D, her superiors, so B was cleared of passing it on. It held X had not shown it lacked controls on conduct, but did find breaches of the duties to keep order trails and chronological order records.

It imposed a two-month ban on D plus EUR 3,000, a reprimand and EUR 2,000 on C, EUR 2,000 on A, a reprimand on B and a warning on X, and ordered publication.

E, the investor said to have traded, is not among the respondents of this decision, and the record does not show what became of him. The decision does not say whether it was later reformed or annulled on appeal. The AMF anonymised the respondents.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2005-04-21 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.