AMF France v. A, B and X (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 25 October 2007 the Commission des sanctions found that the chairman of an IT services company had, through his holding company, sold shares ahead of a capital-increase announcement while holding inside information, and that the company and its chief executive had issued misleading forecasts. It imposed penalties totalling EUR 420,000 and cleared the auditors.

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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Penalty as published

€420k

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 decided this matter on 25 October 2007, after an investigation opened in June 2004 and notifications of grievances sent on 3 August 2006. The company is called Y and later merged into X; its former chairman is A, its chief executive and communications head B.

The notifications alleged that A, through a holding company he controlled, sold 79,439 shares between December 2003 and March 2004 while holding inside information, that A, B and the company issued inaccurate or misleading information, and that they breached rules on price formation through share buy-backs. The auditors were charged with certifying 2002 accounts despite material anomalies in goodwill accounting.

The Commission found that seven press releases between April 2002 and October 2003 gave forecasts that did not match internal reporting showing growing shortfalls, and held A, B and the company responsible. It found insider dealing established for 79,362 of the shares, through which the holding company avoided a loss of EUR 169,291; it dropped the allegation for the 77 shares sold the day before the information was held. It rejected the buy-back allegation for lack of evidence, and the goodwill and pro forma accounts allegations.

It fined A EUR 400,000, B EUR 10,000 and the company (through X) EUR 10,000, EUR 420,000 in all, and cleared both audit firms and their partners. The decision was ordered published with the companies anonymised.

This record does not show how the company's later merger or any appeal affected the outcome.

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. 2007-10-25 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.