AMF France v. S, T, W, X, Y and Z (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 7 June 2007 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that four investment managers (X, Y, Z and W) sold shares of listed company S on 13 and 14 November 2002 after being sounded by bank T on a coming bond issue, before it was announced. It fined X, Y and Z EUR 1.5 million each, W EUR 1 million, and gave bank T a reprimand and EUR 750,000 for record-keeping failures; issuer S was cleared.

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

€6.3m

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 June 2007 after a hearing that day. Grievances had been notified on 20 and 23 December 2004 to issuer S, bank T (global coordinator of an issue of mandatorily redeemable bonds by S, in the London branch) and four managers: X, Y, Z and W.

S was charged with misleading public information. T was charged with breaches of the rules on soundings of investors and on the recording of telephone calls, and with a formal breach of the prospectus rules. The four managers were charged with using inside information about the planned issue by selling S shares before its announcement on 14 November 2002.

The Commission cleared S. It found that investors had been sounded, some had been formally taken over the wall, and the issue was inside information until announced. For Z it relied on a wall-crossing entry, an eight-minute call from T's equity capital markets head on the morning of 13 November, strong allocations in the bookbuild, and sales of 2,040,000 shares on 13 and 14 November after a flat position on the 11th and 12th. For W it noted that one of three directors was sounded and another sold 992,000 shares on 14 November before the announcement, and said it did not matter that two people were involved, since the breach is attributed to the firm. It found the insider breach established against X and Y as well.

It imposed EUR 1,500,000 on each of X, Y and Z (the maximum), EUR 1,000,000 on W (whose breach came from organisational weakness, not a deliberate act), and a reprimand with EUR 750,000 on T, and ordered publication.

The record does not set out the trades of X and Y in detail, 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. 2007-06-07 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.