AMF France v. A (insider trading, 2008)

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 10 April 2008 the Commission des sanctions found that an anonymised investor had used inside information in February 2006 to buy a very large position in the shares of a listed utility before the announcement of its merger with a state-linked gas group, and fined him EUR 400,000. A second allegation, about a 2005 bid target, was rejected.

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

€400k

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 10 April 2008, after an investigation opened in October 2006 into the market in the shares of Suez, extended in January 2007 to shares of Allied Domecq traded in London, and a notification of grievances sent on 29 June 2007. The respondent is published as A; his family company and relatives who also dealt are not named as respondents.

The notification alleged that in February 2006 A used inside information about an imminent public announcement concerning Suez, either an Italian bid by Enel, the merger with Gaz de France announced by the Prime Minister on 25 February 2006, or both. It also alleged that on 1 April 2005 he had bought EUR 215,000 of Allied Domecq shares knowing of an imminent bid by Pernod Ricard.

The Commission found the Suez allegation established. A and his family and company bought a massive number of Suez shares in February 2006 and sold all of them on 27 February, the first trading day after the announcement, making EUR 120,645 for the company and EUR 33,000 for A. The Commission noted that the bank executing the orders had flagged them as atypical, that A had put almost his entire portfolio into this one share and gave no plausible explanation, and that only holding the information could explain the trades. It rejected the Allied Domecq allegation because press reports had already made the bid public.

It imposed a EUR 400,000 financial penalty on A, taking into account profits of both his personal account and the company he owned 99 per cent of, and ordered publication in anonymous form.

This record does not show how A obtained the information or whether the decision was appealed.

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. 2008-04-10 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.