AMF France v. A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H (insider trading, 2007)

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 1 March 2007 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that the chief executive and several senior managers of listed company X had sold shares in autumn 2004 and March 2005 knowing of a coming profit warning and a net loss. It fined A EUR 400,000, B EUR 300,000, D EUR 100,000, C EUR 50,000 and E EUR 1,000, and cleared F, G and H.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€851k

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 second section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 1 March 2007 after a hearing on 1 February 2007. Grievances had been notified in June and July 2006 to eight people: A (chairman and chief executive of company X), B, C and D (deputy chief executives), E (an adviser), F (management controller), G (investor relations) and H (an analyst at another firm).

Company X had said in September 2004 that its second-half operating margin would stay near 5.4 per cent, then on 9 November 2004 warned that it would not be met; the share fell over 10 per cent next day. On 15 March 2005 it reported its first net loss (EUR 27.2 million). A to F were charged with selling before the warning; A, B and C with selling before the loss; G with telling H; H with passing it on to sales staff; and A with a late and wrong threshold declaration and inaccurate statements about his sales.

The Commission upheld insider dealing against A, B, C, D and E. B sold in 2004 and 2005 for himself and family, then bought back after the fall, and the Commission put B's avoided losses on the 2004 sales at about EUR 130,000 across accounts. C sold 55,941 shares between 21 October and 5 November 2004 at EUR 5.29 against a reference price of EUR 4.53 (avoided loss about EUR 42,500), D sold 41 per cent of his holding and nearly all his warrants (about EUR 60,600), and E sold 5,000 shares on 28 October 2004. It held that A, who made two insider breaches (October 2004 and March 2005) and avoided losses it put at about EUR 164,000, knew of his duty to abstain in March 2005, as his emails with his wealth adviser showed.

It cleared F, G and H. It imposed EUR 400,000 on A, EUR 300,000 on B, EUR 50,000 on C, EUR 100,000 on D and EUR 1,000 on E, and ordered publication.

The record shows that A was also found to have made a late and erroneous declaration of a fall below the 10 per cent holding threshold, while the charge that he gave a magazine inaccurate figures on his sales was rejected as not sufficiently established. 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. 2007-03-01 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.