AMF France v. A (price manipulation, 2007)

Judgment entered

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On 20 December 2007 the Commission des sanctions found that the head of a cheese producer had pushed up the price of its very illiquid shares in early 2006 through face-to-face trades on four accounts and repeated order cancellations, and fined him EUR 250,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€250k

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 first section of the Commission des sanctions decided this matter on 20 December 2007, after an investigation opened in June 2006 and a single notification of grievance sent on 2 April 2007 to A. The issuer, called X, produces cheese and sells milk; its shares traded in a double daily fixing on Euronext Paris with a free float of about 0.4 per cent.

The notification alleged an upward manipulation of the price in the first quarter of 2006 by repeated face-to-face trades in unequal quantities across four accounts on which A held powers of attorney, increased volatility from repeated order cancellations, and causing price reservations to the upside.

The Commission found the breach established. The price rose from about EUR 450 on 1 January 2006 to EUR 4,255 on 30 March 2006, well above the issuer's own valuation of around EUR 220, with no internal reason or third-party activity to explain it. It held that the face-to-face trades and the systematic cancellations had no economic reason and gave false or misleading signals, and fixed the price at an abnormal level. The Commission noted that a company A owns at 95 per cent and runs made a gain of EUR 80,151.93.

It imposed a EUR 250,000 financial penalty on A and ordered publication.

This record does not show whether the decision was appealed.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation. 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.

• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2007-12-20 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.