AMF France v. X, A and B (insider trading; charges rejected, 2007)

Dismissed

✓ 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 27 September 2007 the AMF Commission des sanctions rejected all charges against bank X, its bond-trading head A and bond-origination head B over trading in company Y's bonds in May 2005 before a bond exchange offer announced on 15 June 2005, finding that the information held from 4 May 2005 was not yet precise enough to be inside information.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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.

What is alleged to have happened

The first section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 27 September 2007. Grievances had been notified on 6 November 2006 to bank X, A (head of the secondary-trading desk) and B (head of bond origination).

A and X were charged with using inside information about a planned exchange offer by company Y on several of its bond lines, which they allegedly held from 4 May 2005, when Y sent a consultation letter to about ten banks. X was also charged with conflict-of-interest and information-barrier failings, with a late alert to its compliance officer, and B with conduct-rule breaches.

The Commission held that the insider-dealing rules apply to bonds as well as shares, but that the 4 May 2005 letter gave only wide ranges and did not describe a project defined enough to have a reasonable chance of completion: 13 lines worth about EUR 9 billion were first considered, only 5 lines worth about EUR 5 billion were retained, and the amount to buy back fell from EUR 1 to 2 billion to EUR 704 million. A's trading between 4 and 12 May 2005 therefore did not use precise inside information. It found the bank's information-barrier procedures and trading-room layout adequate, held that telling the compliance officer on 2 June rather than 17 May was not sanctionable in the circumstances, and dropped the supervision charge as a consequence.

It cleared X, A and B and ordered publication. No sanction was imposed.

The record shows an unsuccessful charge, not a finding of wrongdoing, 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 (alleged conduct; all charges were rejected). 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. 2007-09-27 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.