AMF France v. A, B, C, X, Y and Z (price manipulation, 2006)

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 19 October 2006 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that the issuer Y of guaranteed-value certificates on company W's shares, through its chief executive and broker, pushed W's price up before the reference period, while firm Z and its trader C pushed it down to raise the certificates' payout. It fined Z EUR 500,000, X EUR 300,000, Y EUR 125,000, C EUR 100,000, B EUR 10,000 and A EUR 5,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

€1m

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, with substitute members, decided the matter on 19 October 2006 after a hearing that day. In 1999 company Y had bought a majority stake in W and issued 92,808 guaranteed-value certificates (CVG) whose payout fell as W's average price over a reference period rose. A COB inquiry opened on 18 June 2002 after unusual price and volume changes in May 2002; grievances were notified on 13 July 2005.

Y, its chief executive B, broker V (now X) and trader A were charged with massive buying of W shares to raise the price and so cut the cost of the certificates. Z, a firm, and C, its proprietary arbitrage head, were charged with heavy selling and round-trip trades in W to push the price down and raise the payout, and with six round-trip trades in the CVG itself between 13 and 20 February 2002 that cut its price by 55 per cent.

The Commission upheld the manipulation charges. The facts recited show a reference price of EUR 15.2558 and a payout by Y of about EUR 494,128 on the certificates. It found the interventions were repeated over weeks, deliberate and made by informed professionals, and in Z's case for its own account.

It imposed EUR 125,000 on Y, EUR 10,000 on B, EUR 300,000 on X (successor to V), a warning and EUR 5,000 on A, a reprimand and EUR 500,000 on Z and EUR 100,000 on C, and ordered publication.

The record does not show the detail of each side's trades, and the decision does not say whether it was later reformed or annulled on appeal. The AMF anonymised the respondents. A further charge of a missing written agreement between X and Y is not covered above.

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. 2006-10-19 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.