AMF France v. Banque X, A and B (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 29 March 2007 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that Banque X, through its manager B, bought 33,604 shares of company Y on 15 December 2004 while knowing that another banking group planned to buy blocks at EUR 195 per share. It fined the bank EUR 950,000 and B EUR 100,000 and gave the bank's chairman A the benefit of the doubt.

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

€1.1m

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 second section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 29 March 2007 after a hearing that day, held with an Italian interpreter. Grievances had been notified in French on 20 April 2006 and in Italian on 19 May 2006 to Banque X and to two individuals, A (its chairman) and B.

The context was a purchase of shares in company Y, listed on Eurolist, by another banking group, Z, which declared threshold crossings on 17 and 22 December 2004. A securities firm had been asked to sound out 104 investors on 14 December 2004 about selling blocks at EUR 195. The notices alleged that Banque X, A and B used inside information about that plan when buying Y shares on 15 December 2004.

The Commission found that the plan to buy blocks at EUR 195 was inside information, and that B obtained it before the public learned of it from at least two possible sources. One was A, but another was B's former employer, an asset manager that was both a main shareholder and the custodian of funds managed by X and was among the investors on the sounding list. It held that B and the bank, as qualified investors, must have known the information was inside information. The bank bought 33,604 Y shares on B's orders on 15 December 2004 between 11:53 and 16:09 at an average of EUR 168.06; purchases had stopped on 19 November and resumed only after B learned of the plan.

The Commission put the saving at EUR 905,292 (the difference between EUR 195 and the price paid). It fined the bank EUR 950,000 and B EUR 100,000, and cleared A at the benefit of the doubt, since the source could have been another person and A was not shown to have taken part in the purchases.

The record does not identify how B actually received the information, which the decision itself leaves open, and 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. 2007-03-29 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.