AMF France v. A and X (marking the close, 2006)

Judgment entered

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On 7 December 2006 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that X, through its manager B, had placed buy orders on the last days of the August and September 2002 trading months to obtain a closing price of EUR 0.99, which helped it avoid margin calls on its position. It fined X EUR 500,000 and rejected a misleading-information charge against shareholder activist A.

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

€500k

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 of the AMF decided the matter on 7 December 2006 after a hearing that day. Grievances had been notified on 27 October 2005 to A, a leading minority shareholder activist, and to X, a company managed by B. Company Y was dual-listed in London and Paris, traded around EUR 1 and had been in a shareholder revolt since 2003.

A was charged with misleading the public over estimates of the share's value, and X with manipulating the price on the settlement dates of August and September 2002.

The Commission found A's value estimates did not amount to a breach of the information rule. On manipulation it found, from telephone recordings with the broker and the exchange's surveillance officer, that X's orders of 26 August and 24 September 2002 were aimed chiefly at getting a closing price of EUR 0.99, with the quantity bought only an adjustment variable. Reaching that price on the settlement dates let X avoid, at least in part, margin calls its underfunded position would have required, against the downward trend. It held that the orders hindered free price formation and could mislead third parties, and rejected the defence that a reserved-price indicative close would have achieved the same.

It cleared A, fined X EUR 500,000, and ordered publication.

A previous Commission decision of 22 April 2004 against the broker KBC Securities France had not found the purpose of these orders certain; the Commission said the present proceeding against the order-giver could assess it differently. 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 marking the close. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2006-12-07 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.

• 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.