AMF France v. A and B (insider trading; charges rejected, 2006)

Dismissed

✓ 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 14 September 2006 the AMF Commission des sanctions rejected insider-dealing charges against company X's chairman A and a deputy chief executive B over subscriptions to a November 2002 bond issue, because the bonds were not yet admitted to trading when the subscriptions were made and so fell outside the rule then in force.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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.

What is alleged to have happened

The Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 14 September 2006. Grievances had been notified on 20 December 2004 to A, chairman of company X from July 2002, and B, deputy chief executive from August 2002, after a COB inquiry into the market in X's shares from 1 September 2002.

The notices alleged that A subscribed, and had family members subscribe, to 1,564,907 mandatorily redeemable bonds of a EUR 1 billion issue announced on 14 November 2002 (about EUR 19.9 million in total), and that B subscribed EUR 80,000, while holding inside information about the likely acquisition of a stake in a telecoms company and about an offer for certain US assets.

The Commission did not rule on the facts. It held that the COB rule then applicable covered only transactions in instruments already admitted to trading, whereas the bonds were admitted on 26 November 2002, after the subscriptions; the later AMF rule extends to instruments for which admission has been requested, but was not less severe and so not applied retroactively.

It cleared A and B and ordered publication. No sanction was imposed.

The record does not show whether the alleged inside information existed or was used, since the Commission did not examine it. 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 (alleged conduct; the charges were rejected on a legal point). 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. 2006-09-14 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.